24 Frames A Film: 'AMERICAN BEAUTY'- Nitty Gritty Blog (film critique)
TRANSCRIPT:
NITTY GRITTY STUDIOS PRESENTS
24 FRAMES A FILM
FILM CRITIQUE. FRAME AT A TIME.
FOR this, the inaugural edition of “24 Frames a Film”, we take a look at the cinematic masterpiece: AMERICAN BEAUTY.
Directed by Sam Mendes; shot by the late, great Conrad L. Hall and written by Alan Ball, the film takes a metaphysical look at the life (and death) of one Lester Burnham.
One part suburban melodrama, one part murder mystery AMERICAN BEAUTY is both deeply moving and deeply funny whilst always challenging you to “look closer.” It was the big winner at the 2000 Oscars taking home 5 awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography for Conrad L. Hall (on what would be his last film) and Best Actor for Kevin Spacey.
AMERICAN BEAUTY has quickly established itself as a true classic of cinema and is one of this film lover’s top 10 films OF ALL TIME!* (*just my opinion)
TRIVIA TIBDIT: Keep your ears peeled for the DEATH OF A SALESMAN reference in the first reel of the movie.
EXT. ROBIN HOOD TRAIL - EARLY MORNING
AMERICAN BEAUTY gets to work quickly utilizing its visuals to amplify it’s main themes. In FRAME 1 we see Lester, center- frame yet hazily absent from his own life, kept behind glass. As his beautiful wife prunes her beautiful American Beauty roses Lester leers out from behind the prison bars of his suburban existence. At work in FRAME 2- where he is a “whore for the advertising industry”- the stark, vertical rows of numbers imprison Lester’s pale, cold/blue reflection in the computer screen.
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INT. HIGH SCHOOL GYMNASIUM - NIGHT
PERSPECTIVE is important in any film. Who do we the audience associate with? Jonathan Demme famously puts you right in Clarice Starling’s place in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS by giving us a series of 1st person POV shots throughout the film to chew on- and the same technique is employed by Mendes and Hall during Lester’s erotic fantasy in the gym.
In FRAME 3 you can see the Kubrickian one-point perspective disappearing into darkness, with Angela framed front and center staring directly into the lens. The choice to place her between parallel lines on the floor helps to accentuate this effect. All of these factors create a tunnel-vision of intensity as we the audience experience Lester’s hypnotic trance first hand. In FRAME 4 it is interesting to note the American Beauty rose bouquet on the table. I picked the wide shot (it dollies in and cuts only when the roses leave the frame) because I feel it also helps illustrate the movement from light to dark in the film- this shot being in the last reel of the film. Indeed the film begins on a beautiful, sunny morning and ends during a dark, rainy night. The wondrously soft alternating gradient of dark to light to dark to light and back to dark again as you move from left to right across the frame is a testament to the great Conrad L. Hall. What seems effortless and accidental I assure you was difficult and intentional.
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EXT. HIGH SCHOOL CAMPUS - A SHORT TIME LATER
SOMETIMES frames can tell a story all unto themselves, as is the case with this series of shots from throughout the film. In FRAME 5 we see Jane and Angela together in the same frame for the first time. There are a series of such shots throughout the first half of the movie- outside at school, in Angela’s car, in Jane’s room etc. Always the two together. Once Ricky becomes “curious” about Jane though he literally comes between them as you can see in FRAME 6. Then in FRAME 7, what appears as shoddy camera work is in fact a subtle hint that Ricky is cutting Angela out of Jane’s life- Angela’s face quite literally cut off by the edge of the frame. Later on in the film we see the aftermath of Jane’s decision to open herself up to Ricky as it is evident in FRAME 8 that Ricky has completely taken over her attention- overrunning the frame from both sides. FRAME 9 shows Angela permanently separated from Jane now. Seemingly swapping spots with Lester, Angela is now alone, trapped behind the bars of her own phony existence. Whether it’s the characters TRULY changing or simply having their true nature’s revealed (Angela was a lonely prude the whole time, we just don’t know it) is an intentional grey area designed by the filmmaker- not plot holes or character illogic. For instance, Lester (and by way of him, we the audience) views Ricky Fitts as an authority on many things: drug dealing, music, B-movies, bartering, shady guys in NYC, Nazi paraphernalia, home movies and plastic bags to name just a few. Lester also believes Angela to be “the most beautiful thing I have ever seen” yet this is in direct opposition to Ricky, who recognizes Angela as the phony she is. We the audience must decide who we trust more. For all we know it could indeed be Ricky who is a “psycho” and in the real world you would probably want to exercise a bit more caution before running off to NYC with someone who’s recently spent time in a psychiatric facility (Jane, I’m looking at you). BUT that’s what makes AMERICAN BEAUTY a great film. It’s layered with the intricacies and incongruities of real life hidden within a classically structured narrative that requires a the audience to “look closer”. Subsequent viewings reveal that buried within this quintessential, minimilaist narrative resides real characters living in a world not of convenient feelings and simple motivations but of poor choices, selfish decisions and coincidental happenstance beyond their control.
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INT. OFFICE BUILDING - MOMENTS LATER
FRAME 10 is from one of my favorite shots in the movie as Lester emerges from behind a glazed panel of glass “happier than he’s been in years” as the script describes it. He has been trapped behind bars, panes of glass and reflections the whole film but in this moment is able to break free. As he crosses the office floor you can see how HE is now the one to be noticed- fighting back against the empty, American, capitalist dream. Which brings me to another intricate grey area in regards to AMERIACAN BEAUTY. The way I see it, Lester’s Firebird that hilariously acts as the true “show-stopper” in Carolyn’s Sinatra sing-a-long confidence booster (FRAME 11) is no less or more a thing- “just stuff” as Lester puts it himself- than the couch is (FRAME 12). Sure one might tend to agree a cool car is intrinsically worth more than a couch but as Carolyn herself points out it is “not just a couch”. Lester likes cars. Carolyn likes couches. I mean seriously, Ricky Fitts is a drug dealing, former psychopath-voyeur who set a fire on Lester’s lawn and is banging his daughter but Lester takes issue with his wife’s materialsim the day he buys a sports car? Personally I think this hypocrisy is lost on a lot of viewers as Lester so obviously occupies the role of “hero” in the story- when in fact he is anything but- but on repeated viewings these subtleties become more and more notieable
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EXT. BURNHAM HOUSE - CONTINUOUS
On VIDEO: We're looking through GREENHOUSE WINDOWS at Lester and Jane in the kitchen We can't hear what they're saying, but it's obvious it's not going well...
COMPARING frames of characters from the first and second half of the film side by side it is much easier to see how framing contributes to the narrative of AMERICAN BEAUTY. In FRAME 13 and FRAME 14 we see both the first and the last time that Lester is alone with Jane. In the first we hear no dialogue and although “it’s not going well” the two of them at least stand close to each other face-to-face whereas towards the end of the film they have quite literally drifted apart as is evident from the spacing and staging of Lester and Jane- now so far apart from each other and no longer squared off. Any chance Lester had of getting closer to his daughter is long gone. FRAME 15 and FRAME 16, the two iterations of the “dinner scene” in AMERICAN BEAUTY once again illustrate the movement of light to darkness in the film as in the latter there is no longer any light spilling in from the windows in the dining room. Also the light previously over Carolyn’s head in the first frame is absent, as is the reflection from the hardwood floor (blocked by the now present tablecloth); and the lamp itself from the background table has been removed (the lamp, not even turned on in the first scene, may have been moved to avoid having to break it when Lester sends the asparagus sailing moments later- although I don’t know why you’d avoid that!). NEXT we see how staging and angles can really affect the effect a frame has on the viewer. In FRAME 17 we look down on Lester, pathetically sitting small in the frame, without a foot to stand on- literally! The cold, blue ambience and stark, naked background accentuate Lester’s lackluster inner life. In sharp contrast is FRAME 18 from later in the film when Lester has the upper hand. He sits tall as we now look down on Brad, suggesting his loss of power. In addition, staging Lester so close to the camera makes him appear twice the size of Brad, driving home that he is no longer a threat to him. For the last comparison I found it interesting that although Carolyn ends AND begins the film with a potential weapon in her hand- albeit pruning shears aren’t quite as formidable as a gun. In FRAME 19 we meet Carolyn gardening in a suit jacket, pearl necklace and full make-up whereas by FRAME 20 she is firing away in a sleeveless shirt! As a character slowly moves from one choice to the next over the course of a film the gradual- ness of it can sometimes blur the sharp contrast that exists from the first moment to the last and Carolyn has just as big a character arc as anyone in the film.
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EXT. FITTS HOUSE - EARLY MORNING EVERY so often a frame elevates to a form of poetry and Colonel Fitts gets two such shots in AMERICAN BEAUTY In FRAME 21 we have the moment Colonel Fitts sees Lester and his “fucking gay pride parade” in the reflection of his car he’s washing (what’s more American than washing your car, right?). As the Colonel moves his hands circularly across the back window he seems to “wipe” away Lester from existence, a foreshadowing of what’s to come. FRAME 22 is selected from another one of my favorite shots in the film. Conrad L. Hall was a master not just at creating shadows but in manipulating them to his every whim. Nowhere is this more evident perhaps than with Colonel Fitts dissolving into the rain as he disappears into darkness. The ambient, blue street-light, refracted by the rain gives the scene a mysterious glow. Lester will never see Colonel Fitts again- though he plays an important part in Lester’s future (or lack thereof) and has no way of knowing the significance of what has just happened- oblivious to the video Ricky has shot of him working out naked in the garage (Desdemona’s handkerchief, if you will, in this tragic tale).
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EXT. SUBURBAN STREET - LATER THAT DAY An automobile FUNERAL PROCESSION appears and begins to pass them slowly. CHECKOV, the Russian playwright, was famous for saying that if there’s a gun hanging on the wall in Act I then by the end of the play someone better be dead. Now of course conventions are meant to be broken but AMERICAN BEAUTY has no such intention. Not only is there a shot of the EXACT gun that will kill Lester hanging in the Colonel’s den- keep your eyes open next time you watch the movie- but in FRAME 23 we get the most obvious foreshadowing ever as a funeral procession (death) passes between Jane, Ricky and the audience. The fact that the foreshadowing is completely unnecessary- Lester tells us he’s going to die in the opening lines of the movie- BUT still works regardless is a testament to the facile and subtle writing, cinematography and directing of AMERICAN BEAUTY. FINALLY in FRAME 24 we get arguably the climax of the film. Lester has his whole world in his hands as he finally “gets it”. As his life flashes in front of his eyes- and a bullet passes through his brain- we the viewers are left to ponder our own mortality as we choose either to “be pretty pissed off” about what happens to us or to instead “feel gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.” After all.. “it’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world.”
FADE TO BLACK.
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Copywright 2017 Ryan Charles/Nitty Gritty Studios
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