American Beauty

American Beauty
In the opening scenes of the film American Beauty, we get introduced to the main character Lester, and we get to know that he is not going to alive in 6 months at the start of the film, this creates a new enigma before the film actually starts. The main character Lester is going through a mid life crisis (another new enigma), this is followed by a number of smaller problems, for example his wife and daughter not having a good relationship with him making him and his house very dull.
Lester is going through a mid life crisis , but his wife on the other hand tries to hide the fact by being very friendly to their neighbours and keeping her and her house very neat, hiding the fact that her daughter and her husband are having problems and are very depressed, which ccreates conflict which refers to Levi-Strauss method.
The narritive structure of this film is that the main character Lester is depressed , this is the equilibrium, we can tell from this that the disequilibrium is not far away.
Levi-Strauss’s theory is well shown in this film with the binary oppositions, with Lester, Carolyn and jane who are all of the same family but do not connect with each other at all. In this film theres is a lot of conflict within the main characters which creates an atmosphere which somehow has to be resolved.
The films music is very clever how different music relates to different parts of the film, so the audience understands what is happening just by the music, for example the music when the main character Lester is dreaming in a fantasy is always the same. The music in the film also sets the mood, so slow dull tones sets the scene as being sad, but an upbeat rythym may be used in a happy scene.
The audience is hooked early on in the film with the home video of Jane talking to somebody filming her,we don’t know who the person filming her is but we can connotate that it is Jane’s boyfriend. Also in this scene , Jane answers yes to the question do you want me to kill your dad, which creates another enigma to the plot of the story.