American Beauty - Lestar Burnham

Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey)

Make notes

Focus on:

·         Body language

·         Voice

·         Clothes

·         Background (mise en scene) ;

·         Set

·         Colours

·         Backgrounds

·         lighting

·         Rather formal voice, confident

·         Smartly dressed

·         Mid life crisis – unhappy, forgetful yet hopeful

·         Unhappily married

·         Family thinks he’s a loser

·         Defeatist attitude – given up on life, negative about most things

·         Cynical

·         Average and plain – house, wife, child, body, dress

·         Lot of money – car, big shower, wife materialistic, roses.

·         Doesn’t love his wife anymore (mutual, faded away) – obvious from sarcasm

·         Has succeeded – no ambition left

·         Has to ‘please’ himself in shower – best part of the day.

·         Nothing goes right for him

·         Unenthusiastic/ monotone voice – link to body language

·         Sits in the back whilst wife and child in front – wife and child don’t respect him

·         Wife’s in authority – unstereotypical

·         Red white and blue colours repeated

·         Trapped – inside house looking out