American Beauty was directed by Sam Mendes, written by Alan Ball, and featured Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham. It tells the story of a family growing apart as Lester experiences a mid-life crisis and falls for his daughter's teenage friend. Lester's crisis is a key reason for tensions within the family. The film explores the idea of looking closer at life and appreciating its beauty, despite depicting a difficult storyline. It uses techniques like cinematography and Freud's Oedipus complex theory to examine these themes and critique suburban life.

1. By Jason Leavy

2.  Was directed by Sam Mendes
 Written by Alan Ball
 Featured Kevin Spacey as the main
protagonist of Lester Burnham

3.  This film tells a story about a family who is
troubled and growing apart from each other.
 Lester the main character is going through
his mid-life crisis and starts to fall in love with
a teenage girl.
 The mid- life crisis is the main reason why the
family is having trouble relating.

4.  To understand American Beauty we have to pay
particular attention to the film's tag line: ". . .
look closer," a clue that we must explore the film
much more wisely to get its real meaning.
 The whole idea of the film is to look closer at life
and what it has in store for you. It makes people
stop and think for a second and realize how
great life really is.
 Even though it does this through a rather
difficult story lin. Ball (the writer) did an
excellent job in bring those ideas to life with in
the house of the Burnham.

5.  There are certain key
factors which make this
movie one of the best
 The cinematography
was phenomenal
throughout the film.
Conrad Hall did an
excellent job with the
lights and darks to set a
certain mood.
 The shots were very
parallel thought out
that film to create this
idea of balanced.


6.  The theory used
throughout this movie
is the Oedipus
Complex Theory.

7.  This is a concept within psychoanalytic
theory referring to a stage of psychosexual
development where a child of either gender
regards the parent of the same gender as an
adversary, and competitor, for the exclusive
love of the parent of the opposite gender. The
name derives from the Greek myth of
Oedipus who kills his father and marries his
mother with out knowing.

8.  Well throughout the film Lester falls in love
with his daughter friend due to the idea of his
mid-life crises.
 We start to see a relationship dwelling
between the two.
 This supports the whole thought of what the
writer wanted in this film.

9.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/
 http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll
/article?AID=/19990924/REVIEWS/909240301
/1023
 http://www.dreamworks.com/ab/

10.  1) (Check) I have not handed in this assignment for any other class.
 2) (Check) If I reused any information from other papers I have written for
other classes, I clearly explain that in the paper.
 3) (Check) If I used any passages word for word, I put quotations around
those words, or used indentation and citation within the text.
 4) (Check) I have not padded the bibliography. I have used all sources
cited in the bibliography in the text of the paper.
 5) (Check) I have cited in the bibliography only the pages I personally
read.
 6) (Check) I have used direct quotations only in cases where it could not
be stated in another way. I cited the source within the paper and in the
bibliography.
 7) (Check) I did not so over-use direct quotations that the paper lacks
interpretation or originality.
 8) (Check) I checked yes on steps 1-7 and therefore have been fully
transparent about the research and ideas used in my paper.