American Beauty Film Review on Entertainment Surge
American Beauty Film Review
Synopsis -
A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.
American Beauty clearly exemplifies the concept of metaphor. There are two striking metaphors in this movie or maybe we can also say first one is metaphor and second one is metonymy: The first one is rose imagery referring to beauty. Mena Suvari is depicted as an object of desire because of Kevin Spacey’s fantasy about this girl and the rose image is detached herself with the imagination of Spacey. Except this detachment, the red is apparently used as the color of door, flower standing on the table, Real Estate posters of Peter Gallagher, Annette’s clothes and Spacey’s new car. Alan Ball, the screenwriter of American Beauty, uses red color in different ways during the film.
As for the question of what this color generally symbolizes is life force. Every character defines their life force (soul, sex, assertion, individuality, ambition etc.) differently. Also, Suvari is an object of hatred linked with Annette Bening that she cultivates the roses in her garden at the first scene. Second one is the plastic bag dancing in the air also has a red wall behind it. We can say this is another object symbolizes again beauty in more spiritual way. Wes Bentley’s words explain why I said it is spiritual: “I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid”. Also, this object is again used at the end of the film because now it is associated with Spacey’s death at peace.
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