Essay Database

American Beauty In American Beauty, 1999, directed by Sam Mendes, we are confronted with the permeating images that have consumed mainstream American life. Mendes exploits these images as constructions that we created around ourselves as a means of hiding our true selves. Mendes is able to implicate us in the construction and make us active viewers by exploiting our voyeuristic nature, the nature of a prying observer to usually seek the sordid or the scandalous. In …

…wever, he is not pessimistic in his conclusions. Like the flower the film is named after we can still bloom late and the appreciation for the beauty will last for eternity. Yet to reach a point to appreciate the beauty we must strip away the complex layers which we have surrounded ourselves with. This is Mendes point, the need to deconstruct the permeating ideologies within our culture. American Beauty. Dir. Sam Mendes. Dreamworks /Warner Brothers, 1999.