The theme in American Beauty is suburban life. It's all there, the self-centered good-looking blonde, the morbid unattractive teenage daughter. The similar houses with gardens and perfect grass, and the streets are lined with oak trees. The Burnhams have two cars; a sedan and an SUV. It's the American Nightmare. Nobody is happy, but they pretend to be. It is a world where material possessions mean more in life than actual people. It's a perfect satire on suburbia.

There are several scenes that are shot using a video camera, which is primarily used by Ricky Fitz, the boy next door. The use of these shots helps the viewer to see the world through Ricky's eyes. It's a world that is from a very different outlook. He sees beauty in ways that many other people wouldn't. By using these shots the viewer sees what Ricky is. How he can see the beauty in Jane, a beauty that she can't even see until meeting him. There isn't any

There are a few scenes where Lester and Carolyn and shot with them distanced apart on either side of the screen. This shows how separate they are. Even thought they live, eat, and sleep with each other they aren't together emotionally. The dinner scenes for instance, they are on opposite side of the screen with Jane in the middle. As the viewer you can see how separate there lives are.

sound in most of these scenes, except when Jane talks to him. In the scene where Jane is showing him his breast from her bedroom window, he doesn't even really looks at her breasts; he just zooms in on her face. This shows how different of an outlook he has compared to the normal guy. I can bet that most men, including me, were interested in seeing her breasts, but he thinks that she is beautiful so he would rather see her expression.

Several scenes are shot by a reflection. For instance, the scene where Lester sneaks into Jane's bedroom to look up Angela's phone number, Jane gets out of the shower to answer the phone and the camera frames her reflection off the mirror. I am not really sure what this is supposed to represent, but I think that this type of shot is could be used to show foul play or deception. This shot is also used when Ricky's father is washing his car and he catches a glimpse of the gay couple jogging with Lester. T

Some common words found in the essay are:
Ricky Fitz, Lester Carolyn, Lester Brad's, American Beauty, American Nightmare, Lester Lester, Ricky Jane, scene lester, type shot, camera close, scenes lester, foul play, instance scene, brad filmed, scenes shot, camera frames, american beauty,
Approximate Word count = 902
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)