The film is centred around the Burnham family. The film focuses on a suburban, American family portraying its characters’ dysfunctional relationships as a direct symptom of their conceptions of beauty. As the title implies the film asks the question ‘what is American beauty?’ The film doesn’t give a definite answer but implies many things such as the roses grown by Carolyn, Angela who seems to be the perfect American Beauty, the American Dream or to what we ourselves conceive to be beauty.

The main cast are Lester (Kevin Spacey) the father, Carolyn (Annette Benning) the mother and Jane (Thora Birch) the daughter. The audience follows the family throughout the film and witnesses the break-up of them.

The film begins with what seems to be a home video of Jane, someone offers to kill her father for her, she says ‘Yes, would you’ This makes the audience think that the film is going to have a murder theme and that Jane either hates her father or is extremely callous. The video also suggests spying and domestic melodrama and that the film could als

The film opens with its main protagonist declaring ‘I’m 42 years old. In less than a year I will be dead. Of course I don’t know that yet. In a way, I’m dead already’ by this the film has already established its dry sense of humour, its non-linear narration and its characters fate. The audience assumes that we will witness this event as the climax and that his death may have something to do with Jane because she said she wanted him dead. In addition to foreshadowing the climax we also have started absorbing an equilibrium of family tension.

The second sign is at his daughter’s school, Carolyn and Lester have gone to watch Jane cheerleading and half way through the performance Lester finds himself staring at one of Jane’s friends Angela (Mena Süväri) in a sexual way. He visualises her alone and taking her top off and a lot of red rose petals flying out. The audience then expects the petals to be a reacurring motif in the film because this is the second time we have seen them (Carolyn pruning them at beginning). We are not sure why Lester visulises the roses- they could be a connotation of American beauty and what Lester associates with beauty.

When he introduces his daughter Jane the tone in his voice changes to a softer more loving tone, this show his fondness and love for Jane and a sense that she is the only positive aspect in his life.

At the beginning Jane appears to be quite normal, your average angry teenager, she seems to be quite bitter about certain things and especially disappointed in her parents. She seems to be quite insecure and believes she doesn’t have any special qualities. The audience expects Janes character to develop and her special qualities to be shown and because her parents will change so will Jane.

We first

Some topics in this essay:
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