The purpose of this essay is to examine the elements of editing that contribute to the overall effect of the film, American Beauty. A basically mise-en-scene film, this movie showcases the talent of a director and editor who employed both formalist and realist techniques to create a compelling drama about one man's movement toward death after years of futility. The illusion created is of time moving rapidly, slowing, and then stopping forever for Lester Burnham, the film's protagonist.
In this film, Lester and Carolyn Burnham have largely conformed to the stereotypical behavioral and lifestyle patterns of middle class America. He has a successful career, they own a beautiful home filled with expensive possessions, and she has developed a sense of frustration regarding her own role in life and her sense that she lacks sufficient control over that life. Their daughter, Jane, rejects both her mother's ambitions and her father's mockery. She turns to Ricky, a troubled and abused young man whose drug dealing is an act of deviance and rebellion against his own overbearing fascist father (Hentzi, 46).
Lester Burnham elects to blackmail his supervisor and to restructure his life to include bodybuilding, pot smoking, a menial job at a fast food restaurant, and the pursuit of a beautiful teenage girl who happens to be a friend of his daughter. This young girl, one of the symbols of "American Beauty," present in the film, fascinates Lester who is genuinely if absurdly rejuvenated by the illusions of freedom and fulfillment embodied in an underage girl.
According to Louis Giannetti, the angle from which a subject is photographed has an impact on how the image reads and on how the viewer reacts or responds to the image. In this film, the director and editor used a number of techniques to ensure that their point of view would be conveyed to the audience and that the illusion of Lester Burnham's and other characters inner emotions w...