American Beauty- Look closer

Looking closer is the films tag line, the concept is the director (Sam Mendes) trying to make the audience to look closer at each scene to gain something more out of it in order for the movie to make sense.

A scene where the words "Look closer" plays a role in the film.

First Example of looking closer

The first example of looking closer in the award winning film is in the office scene.

Looking at this frame, you can see a spread sheet on the computer, and Lester's reflection in it.

By looking closer at this frame, Medes is trying to point out that the way the spread sheet is set up and the reason Lester is in the reflection is to identify that Lester is trapped inside a small confined area (The computer), and the way the numbers on the spread sheet are going down is because the numbers symbolize jail bars.

Second example of looking closer

Another example of looking closer in the film is in one of the starting scenes when Caroline, was picking roses.

To the naked eye it looks like Caroline is admiring the beauty of the rose.

But if you look closer, the Rose is a symbol. A rose is usually beautiful on the outside but lifeless on the inside. Mendes has portrayed the rose as being like Caroline, she looks rich,successful and beautiful on the outisde, but shes lifeless on the inside and doesn't show affection towards Lester.

Caroline is perfect but lifeless.

Third example of looking closer

The third example of looking closer in the film is when we are first introduced to Ricky Fitts and his family.

The Fitts household is a very dull and boring household that is also very strict and like the army.

In the scene, when we are first introduced to Barbara Fitts (The mother), she looks very pale and lifeless.

An example of looking closer in this scene is by observing the oven red oven mitt (Green arrow) on the wall.

That symbolizes Barbra's heart being ripped out of her body and put on the side of the cupboard. This makes her lifeless on the inside which makes sense seeing as how The Colonel (The father) controls everything both Ricky and Barbra do in their life.

Fourth example of looking closer

The fourth example of looking closer in American Beauty is in the scene when Lester finds out about Carolien's affair with Buddy.

Throughout the film, Lester was always overruled and had been taken advantage of by everyone. Lester was also quite depressed and sad due to him being overruled, that was until he started to take charge of his life.

When we look at this scene, we see the restaurants logo and name "Mr Smilieys" on both the window and on the takeaway bag (Green arrow).

By looking closer at this scene and identifying the logo and company name, Mendes wants us to make the assumption that Lester is now happy (based on looking at the smiley face logo in the shot), hes got his dream job and he knows his wife's biggest secret, no one can rain on his parade.

Last example of looking closer

The last example of looking closer in the film is through Caroline.

This scene is significant because its the first time we see Caroline having a mental breakdown.

By looking closer at these frames, Mendes wants the audience the realize that behind closed doors, Caroline isn't a perfect as she's made out to be.

She is trapped as she closes the screen door, she is also having a tantrum because she has failed and she knows it, she also doesn't like to fail because she sets herself up as being prefect.

The blinds also come into play in this scene acting as bars in a prison cell to really make her feel trapped.

Conclude

To conclude, Mendes uses a different variety of ways to allow the audience to look closer in this film.

He does this through adding little hints and symbols that mean a lot and makes the audience think harder and more in depth about the film.

By using the concept of looking closer, Mendes attracts a large audience which is why he is such a highly renown director.

This idea has contributed towards the films success.

Thanks for Watching!

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American Beauty- Look closer

By Jaiman Soma