Sam Mendes’s American Beauty, chronicles the final chapters of Lester Burnham’s life as a man unhappy with his cold and meaningless life, who chooses to break out of his habits and unfulfilling career. To those surrounding Lester, they see his dramatic change as pure insanity while he sees it as the best way to live his life. As the audience, we perceive this change as the people around him would at first, but then slowly grow to understand the individual humanity of Lester Burnham. To signify this change in understanding visually, Sam Mendes and cinematographer Conrad Hall gradually transform the flat space objective shot design into more of a subjective film space over the course of the film to accentuate it’s main theme of beauty being all about perspective.
In the beginning of the film Lester is extremely disillusioned with suburban and corporate lifestyle. During this portion of the film the shot design is built with flat-space and surface division. This starts off the film with the idea of an objective perspective, meaning that there is no personal touch to the way we perceive the world. So although perfectly red roses, perfectly cubic cubicles, and perfectly typical family life might seem on the outside beautiful, we begin to gain perspective over the course of the film just how impersonal and uniform all of those perceived beauties are. In order to exemplify this tone of uniformity in an otherwise visually pleasing color palette, Mendes frames these shots of “beauty” with straight, boring lines, dividing up the screen. And in one particular shot, uses Lester’s computer to symbolize how it’s reminiscent of a prison.
As the film progresses, we meet Ricky Fitts, an odd kid only because he portrays himself honestly without the facade of suburban bliss. Ricky likes to film things that others might not view as beauty but from his perspective he believes they are a truer, more real form of beauty. Mendes signals to us the difference in perspective through choosing not to use any flat space or surface division but to instead give Ricky’s camcorder no restrictions and just let it film freely within the space, as if seeing it literally through Ricky’s point of view. Therefore creating the film’s most prominent subjective point of view. When this is contrasted with the shot design of most of the film it’s clear which one feels more personal and more human which is ultimately what Lester and others are searching for the entire film’s runtime.
As the Lester and some of the other characters begin to free themselves from the empty facade of the “perfect” life they’re told they have to live, the film’s coverage becomes increasingly subjective. An example would be that the first dinner table scene is shot objectively, parallel from the wall and virtually no shot-reverse-shot. In the second dinner table scene however, includes a multitude of over the shoulder shots and close ups.
In the final minutes of the film, Lester is murdered and therefore freed from the burden of reality. Mendes translates this to the viewer by completely discarding the flat space/objective point of view and replacing it with an impossibly subjective omniscient point of view. We are not just seeing the world through someone’s perspective, we’re seeing the world through someone’s imagination. The camera floats above rooms in Lester’s house, as if shot from heaven. The only other time this technique is used is the first scene of the film where Lester is giving a voice-over monologue after his death which is still in keeping with the idea that this technique is used exclusively for scenes where Lester is dead looking down at earth. The film started out with a man, unhappy, and stuck in a constricting suburban life. Then as Lester begins to gain confidence to be unique and himself, the film’s shot design mimics that character progression through slowly becoming a more original, less restrictive point of view.
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