Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 10

1/24/11 English 244 G Block

American Beauty Shot-by-Shot Analysis


Near the beginning of American Beauty (1999, Sam Mendes), Lester Burnham tells us outright that he will soon be dead. So, over 110 minutes later, when a pistol steadies behind his unsuspecting skull and blasts his brains onto the wall in front of him, it comes as no huge surprise. What happens afterward, though, is a unique view into Lesters life, a cautiously optimistic retrospective narrated by a totally changed Lester Burnham. Soon, it becomes clear that the Lester who gives the movies voiceover is more down-to-earth and worldly than any living iteration of the character; it seems to us that death has changed Lester for the better, if thats within the realm of imagination, by giving him an unforeseen perspective on everything thats happened to him in the film and teaching us that theres always more than meets the eye.

DESCRIPTION The first shot of the sequence is a high-angle point-of-view shot looking and traveling down the stairwell. The stairs are covered by a blue rug. The stairway is on the right of the frame, but curves toward the middle as it goes further down. The camera is not perfectly still as it moves down the stairs; it mimics the motions of a person trudging cautiously downstairs. There is no sound during this shot, which lasts for about six seconds. The film then cuts to a still low-angle shot tilted up at Ricky Fitts and Jane Burnham stepping down the aforementioned stairwell on the left of the frame, revealing one of them (probably Ricky, who is considerably taller) to be the person whose point of view was shown in the previous shot. Ricky and Jane are holding hands; Ricky slightly in front wearing a blue shirt, Jane behind wearing black. This whole shot is dimly lit and the high-key lighting hardly creates any shadows or

contrast. This shot lasts for five seconds until the two of them walk almost completely out of the still frame. The next shot is initially out of focus, a tilt downward that is incomprehensible until it becomes clear that a close-up door is being swung open to reveal a pool of blood on a white table in the next room. The blood is starkly and brightly red, unlike the dim colors that have shown up so far. We dont know what caused the door to open, so this is likely another point-of-view shot. Then, Shot 4, positioned from the room with the pool of blood, frames Ricky staring through the crack of the door that was opened in Shot 3. The door and walls are white while Ricky is, of course, wearing blue. This scene has frontal lighting so there is a shadow on Rickys surprisingly calm, unemotional face. Ricky opens the door fully, and Jane walks in and looks down. Neither of their faces has moved, and the only sound thus far has been the door opening and the faint clatter of the rain outside. Shot 5 is an eye-line match that picks up where Shot 3 left off. We again see the pool of blood through the other side of the door. This shot is in fact edited discontinuously because in the previous shot, Ricky opened the door for Jane to enter, while here, it is still opened just a crack as it was in Shot 3, so the blood is only visible through the doorway and the door. Although she is off-screen, Jane says Oh, my God as the camera pans down to reveal blood dripping on the wooden floor. The shot/reverse shot pattern continues, as the film cuts back to the medium close-ups of Jane and Ricky that we saw earlier. Jane is initially the only one in the foreground with her face partially lit, but Ricky walks forward out of the shadows as the camera tracks him, moving backward until Jane is out of focus. Rickys head momentarily casts a shadow on the white wall, and music starts to play. The next cut continues the pattern, but shows an entirely new perspective from the back of the table with blood on it. The entire left of the frame is occupied by an out of focus object presumed to be the head of Lester Burnham, as the pool of blood is visible on the bottom of the frame. Ricky, in focus, squats down

until we can see his head instead of his waist. His face has not moved this entire time, and he stares at the body analytically for a few seconds before he starts to tilt his head. The film then cuts to a completely still point-of-view shot, a medium close-up of Lesters face, lain flat on the table in his own blood. He has a blank expression and seems to be staring straight ahead. This shot has low-key illumination, with all of Lesters face as well as his white clothes brightly lit relative to the rest of the frame, with his neck and the entire background in shadow. The next cut is back to Ricky staring at Lester, and he tilts his head even further horizontally. Rickys dark reflection is shown in the red pool of blood at the bottom of the frame, and his clothes contrast with the white curtain in the background. This sequence is repeated, totaling two still shots of Lesters head and three of Ricky staring at him. These shots are startlingly static given the subject of them until the final shot of Ricky: he manages a faint smile before drifting back off into deep thought and tilting his head back up. His eyes move back and forth, and he finally says, Wow. One more cut back to the same shot of Lesters body ends this minisequence about a minute after it began. During this twelfth shot, Lester begins to narrate. Next, the shot of Lesters face cross-fades into a shot of the bright blue sky with a cloud appearing to be moving horizontally as the camera pans right. At this point, continuity editing is abandoned as the previous sequence clearly took place at night. Music is still playing. Shot 14 starts with another cross-fade to a black-and-white overhead shot of Lester as a child laying in crass, contemplating life. This shot seems to continue the horizontal motion of the clouds shot, moving so Lester starts in the right of the frame and ends up on the left. This shot also has low-key illumination as Lesters bright white shirt stands out against the shadowy grass, which at first appears similar to the night sky (in contrast with the previous blue, daytime sky), with bright flowers acting as the stars. During this shot, the narrator mentions watching falling stars. Another cross-fade is employed to show an overhead shot of Janes room. The left-to-right motion is seamlessly continued, as we first see her white wall, then her barely-saturated purple rug, then her and Ricky snuggling on her gold/red bedspread. Their faces are

starkly side-lit, presumably by a window off-screen to the right, as there are dark shadows of objects in the room on the wall. When they are in the middle of the frame, the sound of a bullet pierces the tranquility of the moment, and we realize that this shot covers the time when Lester was shot. They both lift their heads abruptly but not violently and continue to get out of the bed as we finally can see the window on the wall. Finally, the left-to-right motion of the previous shots is broken as that shot cross-fades to a medium close-up of a tree blowing in the wind. It is in black and white, and we understand that it is another flashback to Lesters childhood. The camera pans right extremely slowly; this shot lasts only a few seconds. Mysteriously, the quick horizontal motion is restarted as the tree fades into a shot of Angela in the Burnhams bathroom. We can only see her head even though it is a medium shot; she only occupies a fraction of the bottom of the frame. Furthermore, she is applying makeup (or wiping away tears) and we can only see her face in the white-framed mirror on the pale-green-painted and whitetiled wall. The sound of the gun is played again, and Angela reacts by standing up straighter and turning her head to the left so that we can see most of her face without looking in the mirror, which is now slightly out of focus. The lighting seems to be coming from the side as her blonde hair is in shadows when she turns her head into the light. The dolly moves so that her face is on the far left of the frame when the doorframe begins to obstruct it. By now, she is turned so she is almost completely facing the camera. The 18th shot begins by yet another cross-fade to a black-and-white close-up of an elderly pair of hands revealed by the Lesters narration to be his grandmothers from a long time ago. The wrinkles in her fingers are extremely prominent thanks to the low-key illumination. There is still horizontal motion, but it is much slower. We can see that the hands are fiddling with a button on the womans sweater. The narration temporarily halts as the hands cross-fade into a medium shot of Lesters wife Carolyn walking slowly toward the camera in the pouring rain. There is no horizontal motion whatsoever, even though this shot is still part of the same montage. There is a bright light coming from

behind Carolyn that darkens the visible red of her dress. She holds a black purse up to her chest as she grimaces through the rain; the gunshot is heard very faintly among the loud clatter of the rain; Carolyn has no reaction. Another cross-fade is used, this time to a close-up of a snazzy Firebird from Lesters youth, again portrayed in black and white. The camera pans diagonally down one of its horizontal edges to the hood of the car with a bright light, possibly the sun, reflecting off the bright paint. For the first time in over a minute, a new scene is not introduced with a cross-fade as the car cuts to pitch black. Almost immediately, though, Col. Fitts turns on a light from the right of the frame. His white, blood-stained shirt and dark pants are very well lit, but his face is in near-total darkness and his body casts a larger-than-life shadow on the wall behind him, indicating that the scene is under-lit. Col. Fitts pants heavily and begins to remove his shirt as he walks out of the frame to the left while the camera pans and zooms in on an empty spot in his gun cabinet. This shot cross-fades to a black-andwhite shot of Jane opening a white door from left to right; the camera doesnt move and her side-lit face is positioned in front of a dark curtain in shallow space. The narration begins to mention Janie, and this shot wipes out right-to-left as another white door opens slowly to reveal a younger Jane in a winged fairy costume curiously waving a firecracker, also in black and white. Here, the background of dark trees indicated that she is standing outside, not inside. These two shots only last a few seconds, and end up cross-fading to a present shot of Carolyn closing a white door behind her; she is finally out of the rain. As soon as she steps inside, she gasps in horror; scurries leftward to a nearby closet, and shoves her purse in a box, and starts wailing as she grasps a number of shirts in the closet and falls to the ground, her back to the camera. Now, her red dress is much more striking than it was before, even though the closet is dark. Pale white closet doors frame her on either side; all on the left of the frame as the camera has barely tracked her movements it has mainly just zoomed out to create a long shot from a medium close-up. The shot cross-fades into Shot 25, another flashback to a black-and-white medium close-up younger Carolyn laughing hysterically on a rotating amusement park ride. Within the frame, she is

constant and the dark, night-time background is the only fluid part of the shot; the two are noticeably juxtaposed. There are lights in the background, but they are out of focus and too large to be stars. Carolyn is wearing a brightly-colored jacket. After another cross-fade, we see a poor-quality amateur video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind above dark concrete scattered with leaves in front of a red brick wall. The camera is zoomed in quite closely on the bag, and appears to be a distance away from it since the cameras operator cant always keep up with the rapid, unpredictable movements of the bag. We see this for approximately fifteen seconds before it cross-fades to an aerial perspective of a suburban street while zooming out slowly. Most of the houses are white, and there are trees lining the street, but most are barren and colorless, creating a grey, monochromatic texture only broken by the bright houses and the occasional evergreen. Soon, the camera tilts up as well as zooms out, and can see thousands more houses and buildings similar to the original subjects; size diminution is evident. Finally, after about fifteen seconds, the camera reveals a sliver of blue sky reminiscent of the cloud shot at the beginning of the montage, but this sky is only visible at the very top of the frame for less than a second before the film cuts to black and concludes with the final line of Lesters narration and the final note of the music that has been playing this entire time.

ANALYSIS At the start of this sequence, we have in common with the characters onscreen a curiosity toward what has just happened: Lester has been shot, and although we saw his blood on the wall, we dont know whose hand was holding the pistol, or what his dead body looks like. Thus, we let out the same gasp as both Ricky and Jane at the sight of that striking pool of blood through the doorway; however, we are very soon led to consider a previously unfathomable thought: there is beauty in Lesters tranquil, half-missing face laying flat on the table, infinitely red blood dripping slowly onto the

floor. Symbolically though, we begin to realize the truth, that there is much more to a pool of blood than the images conjured up by staring at one, isolated, through a doorway, as Ricky and Jane first do. Ricky opens that door and examines the area closely enough that he can see past the sorrow and pain of death; he can find room for a sincere smile at the scene of a murder. As viewers, its not obvious to us just yet, but Ricky has just given us the first indication that Lesters shortened life was indeed significant beyond being the subject of our attention for the previous two hours. Ricky understands that theres always more than meets the eye, and we are about to learn this lesson from Lester himself. As Ricky is staring at his body, Lester begins his final narration. That narration introduces a discontinuous montage of flashbacks interspersed with shots depicting different characters at the moment of the fatal gunshot. The first shot, a long horizontal cloud appearing to continue on forever from a left-to-right panning motion, is a visual representation of what Lester is telling the audience, that ones final living second seems to stretch forever like an ocean as your entire life flashes in front of your eyes. It gives us the idea that Lester may still be in that never-ending moment, still clinging to life in some faint way. The constant panning motion, especially as it fades into a shot of Jane and Ricky on her bed during the moment of the gunshot, reminds us of a film reel being projected on the screen and makes us wonder whether we are watching firsthand memories or a standard news reel of Lesters life, similar to the one at the beginning of Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles). What clarify this sequence are the parallels between the past and the present; the black and white and the color. Lesters first memory of himself at Boy Scout camp is shown from a high angle; so, too, are Jane and Ricky, laid out on the ground just like him. While no gunshots go off during Lesters memory, the point is that seemingly innocent times, such as those spent staring at the stars or cuddling in bed as a teenager, are never as simple, or innocent, as they seem.

It is clear that the shots presented in color are not part of Lesters memory; however, because they are interspersed with his memories, they have meaning. For example, the aforementioned shot of Lester staring at the sky is juxtaposed with Jane and Ricky; a shot of a particularly nice maple tree from Lesters youth is juxtaposed with Angela wiping away tears in the bathroom; a shot of his grandmothers paper hands is juxtaposed with Caroline waddling in the rain; and finally, a shot of an exciting new firebird is juxtaposed with Col. Fitts changing his bloody shirt. Each of the color shots eliminates one suspect from the question of who shot Lester until we see Col. Fitts with proverbial (and, in this case, literal) blood on his hands, and while the corresponding flashbacks are not as concrete, they are sequenced the way they are in order to accentuate the true unimportance of who actually killed him. Each shot of someone frantically reacting to the sound swooning about some far-off memory that certainly seems insignificant compared to his own death, but the proof that Lester has changed lies in the fact that he finds them more important simply of the gunshot or looking painfully stressed out is tightly contradicted by Lesters blissfully ignorant voice because they are pleasant, and life should be celebrated. Earlier in the movie, Lester would have sarcastically pitied himself, but since then, he has found peace. Lesters next flashback involves two successive shots of a door opening to show Jane. The first slowly reveals Jane at her present age, and she has the same melancholy, pessimistic look on her face, as well as the dark clothing that she has had for the entire movie. The second depicts Jane as a toddler in a white fairy costume, holding a firecracker in front of her, constantly curious and eager to see what will happen from one second to the next. Disappointment seeps through Lesters voice, especially as we see young Janie her life so full of possibility! since we know that Lesters biggest regret is his sour relationship with his daughter. Fittingly, the next shot is Carolyn slamming the front door shut behind her, symbolizing the metaphorical door that she and Lester abruptly shut by becoming so distant from Jane at such a young age and wasting what could have been a loving, happy relationship.

Even though she didnt react to the gunshot in a previous shot, when Carolyn walks into the house, she doesnt even have to see Lesters body to know what has happened: Her soaking wet, rosecolored dress has just as much blood on it as Col. Fitts t-shirt. In fact, she doesnt even have a single white spot on her clothing. Her unfaithfulness and insecurity are just as much to blame for her familys current situation as the pistol that shot Lester in the back of the head, and this is why she breaks down crying in the closet even after hiding her own handgun inside her pocketbook. Hiding the gun wont hide the blood all over her body. To Lesters credit, he doesnt talk about anything Carolyn has done. Instead, he chooses to remember a time when she was full of unbridled happiness and laughter, at an amusement park some time ago, which is further testament to his newfound maturity in death. He understands that she was an integral part of his familys downfall, but shows strength greater than hers by completely disregarding recent history. Perhaps this is all a result of Lesters relief that hes not the one left on Earth to deal with the mess caused by his death, but no matter what, he is a much more rational man than he was before. The choice to show Rickys plastic bag video appears at first to be random, but in actuality, it perfectly ties together Rickys reaction to Lesters body and Lesters flashback sequence. In its own way, each segment stressed the importance of looking past the obvious and finding pleasure in seemingly odd places. The shot vindicates Rickys creepy behavior (notably, filming people nonstop with or without permission) throughout the film, and confirms the change in Lesters attitude. As Ricky earlier stated, a plastic bag is the unlikeliest of items in which to find such gushing beauty, yet here we are, in awe of the way it blows so randomly over the same patch of asphalt. Its the perfect microcosm for this whole sequence of the film because its not an actor drawing attention to himself; its a simple product of nature thats unspeakably easy to overlook but ultimately rewarding for those who do take notice. The final shot, in which the camera zooms out and tilts up from showing just the Burnhams street to the entire monochromatic suburban area as well as a small portion of the sky, shows us how insignificant

our lives are in the grand scheme of things. By doing so, it drives home the films message: We should all be optimistic and grateful for our stupid little lives, as Lester says he is, since we do each make up such a tiny, miniscule portion of society. This shot lets us know that all over the place there are people with the same problems as us, and its not worth concentrating on the negatives. Finally, the last few frames of this shot frame part of the sky above the horizon, similar to the sky shown at the beginning of Lesters flashback, reinforcing the point that death awaits all of us, but doesnt need to be the focus. Is American Beauty navely optimistic? Not necessarily. In this final sequence of the film, it doesnt shy away from any harsh realities, be they gory corpses or emotional breakdowns. It doesnt try to dictate how we should live; rather, it merely cautions us from being too shortsighted, which, it shows us, is worse than any reality life can throw out. In the aftermath of a violent murder within the story, the filmmakers create focus on beauty and happiness through Rickys unique perspective on a dead body and Lesters surprisingly mature convocation with death, and demonstrate by careful juxtaposition of reality and memory that there is always more to life than what we see.

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi