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American Beauty Movie

American Beauty Movie. Julianne Weisendanger Communication Practicum-Level One: Interpersonal Communication. Introduction. American Beauty is an America movie produced in 1999. Sam Mendes was the director of the movie and Alan Ball as the writer.

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American Beauty Movie

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  1. American Beauty Movie Julianne Weisendanger Communication Practicum-Level One: Interpersonal Communication

  2. Introduction • American Beauty is an America movie produced in 1999. • Sam Mendes was the director of the movie and Alan Ball as the writer. • It features Spacey as the stars (Lester Burnham) at his 42 years and working in an advertising. • He is featured with midlife crisis after being obsessed to his daughter’s best friend. • The main theme featured is imprisonment and escape from the prison. • In communication aspect, the movie explores themes like romance, paternal love, beauty, sexuality, materialism, redemption, and self-liberation (Ball, 2000).

  3. Settings • American Beauty is focused on the middle-class. • It features the American values and American lifestyle. • In the family setup, Lester Burnham’s wife is portrayed as an unsuccessful realtor • It also features the 16-year-old Lester’s daughter; Jane leading an unhappy life struggling with self- esteems issues. • Lester is becoming depressed after hitting his midlife crisis. • Lester meets Angela who is his daughters’ friend, and develops an infatuation. • He makes life-changing decision by quitting job, black mailing his boss, and trades his current car for a nice red sports car.

  4. Themes The main themes portrayed in the movie include: • Materialism, • The reality and appearance, • Loneliness and the feeling of connection, • Denial and domination, • Chaos and control, • Change and searching, and • Objective and Subjective beauty (Zhuang, 2006)

  5. Plot • The director features Lester in his middle-age working as an executive writer in an advertising magazine. • He later resigns but after learning that he would be laid off. • He has a challenged marriage living unhappily with Carolyn, • Frank Fitts is the neighboring family to Lester • Frank is a retired colonel from US Marine Corps. • His son Ricks works as a part time bar caterer and waiter. This job allows him to hide his marijuana dealings

  6. Cont.… • Lester starts having sexual fantasies with Angela becoming infatuated with her. • His wife Carolyn starts an affair with Buddy Kane, a married business rival. • Lester learns that he would be laid off but blackmails the manager and quits. • He discovers the infidelity of his wife but reacts indifferently but the affair ends later through Buddy fearing divorce. • Carolyn is willing to confess to her husband and drives in rain.

  7. Cont… • When Lester is about to engage Angela sexually, Angela urges him to change his mind citing the she was a virgin. • While Angela is taking a bath, Lester is short while smiling at a family photograph • The movie portrays closing narration of Lester describing his meaningful experiences during his life. • Despite his death, he has led a happy life because of the beauty of the world.

  8. Characters Lester Burnham • He is working in an advertising magazine with less wage slavery and feels living a shallow and meaningless life. He Carolyn’s husband and father to Jane (Ball, 2000). Carolyn Burnham • She is Lester's wife and a head in a real-estate firm. She is featured as the Stepford Smiler of high caliber. Jane Burnham She is a daughter to Lester and Carolyn at 16 years old. She troubled with low self-esteem after father seemingly withdrew his intentions on her.

  9. Cont… Angela Hayes • She is Jane's best friend. She is featured hiding in fear of being just a normal girls. She engages in several sexual relationships to prove that she actually attractive especially to men (Ball, 2000). Ricky Fitts • He is son to Frank and the neighbor to Lester’s family. Friend to Lester and sells marijuana in his part time caterer and waiter in a bar Buddy Kane • He is the main business rival to Carolyn. He starts an affair with Carolyn but later withdraws fearing the cost of divorce. He is powerful, innovative, with enormously charismatic eyebrows.

  10. Cont… Col. Frank Fitts • He is a retired colonel from a disciplined parent and US marine. He is featured attempting to bring up Rick to be like him bub faced with frustrations (Ball, 2000). Barbara Fitts • She is Col. Frank’s disjointed wife. She is featured as a silent character with internal secrets going on here. Jim Berkley & Jim Olmeyer • This is a gay couple at Burnham’s neighborhood. They are portrayed as most normal people in the movie. This couple helps Lester to develop his new workout regimen.

  11. Characteristics of Communication Mutual Understanding Characters portray this element as they can agree on various issues. Like Lester agrees to change his mind when he wanted to have sex with Angela (Ball, 2000). Exchange of Ideas Characters can communicate effectively and exchange ideas Direct and indirect communication There are many modes of communication and can use words and symbols to communicate.

  12. References • Ball, A., & Mendes, S. (2000). American beauty. FilmFour books. • Zhuang, L., Jing, F., & Zhu, X. Y. (2006, November). Movie review mining and summarization. In Proceedings of the 15th ACM international conference on Information and knowledge management (pp. 43-50). ACM.

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