In class we watched the first ten minutes of 'American Beauty' as a class and were told to analyse the character Lester Burnham played by Kevin Spacey. We took notes on his body language, voice and clothing. We also took notes on the mise en scene which includes the background
My Notes on Lester Burnham:
- 42 years old, American accent, confident and bold
- mid-life crisis
- average body shape of a 40 year old man- unhappy with his plain life
- wears full pyjamas
- one teenage child - Jane (plain name) - plain life, average- combed hair, normal businessman suit, nothing special
- gardening obsessed wife, everything has to be matching/perfect
- he seems the character who would sigh a lot, bored of his own life
- defeatist attitude, negativity surrounds him, pessimist, cynical
- doesn't love his wife any more, she doesn't either, fading marriage
- Lester himself is fading as a person, his life is complete and he's waiting for it to end- everything that could possibly go wrong in his life has or will
- trapped in his own life, no way out until he expires, he watches the world go by
- cynical, monotone American voice, although well spoken, unenthusiastic.
- looks well off: decent car, big house, big shower, materialistic family, computer etc.
-bland body language
-no ambition left in him
- stereotyping: she drove the car, he was late; she has power and is dominant, he sat in the back of the car asleep like a child
My Notes on Lester Burnham:
- 42 years old, American accent, confident and bold
- mid-life crisis
- average body shape of a 40 year old man- unhappy with his plain life
- wears full pyjamas
- one teenage child - Jane (plain name) - plain life, average- combed hair, normal businessman suit, nothing special
- gardening obsessed wife, everything has to be matching/perfect
- he seems the character who would sigh a lot, bored of his own life
- defeatist attitude, negativity surrounds him, pessimist, cynical
- doesn't love his wife any more, she doesn't either, fading marriage
- Lester himself is fading as a person, his life is complete and he's waiting for it to end- everything that could possibly go wrong in his life has or will
- trapped in his own life, no way out until he expires, he watches the world go by
- cynical, monotone American voice, although well spoken, unenthusiastic.
- looks well off: decent car, big house, big shower, materialistic family, computer etc.
-bland body language
-no ambition left in him
- stereotyping: she drove the car, he was late; she has power and is dominant, he sat in the back of the car asleep like a child
Mise en Scene
Red, White and Blue, were the three main colours repeated threw out the opening ten minutes this is continuity of the three American flag colours. The backgrounds were always dull, using monotone colours as well as textures, nothing ever stood out, this may have been to focus the audience’s attention on the character Lester Burnham himself, this also matched his mood and life.
When looking at all my notes together Lester seems to of lived his life and now is slowly waiting/deteriorating, he seems the type of person that when after he dies, people will have nice things to say but at the same time nothing at all for example 'he was a nice man, never said much'. In the end there is no way around his average 'plain ' life, so it seems he will put up with it until the day he dies.
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