American Beauty Opening Scene Analysis

Lester Burnham (played by Kevin Spacey)

• Submissive: seen by the way his character is dominated and put down by his wife and child
• Dissapointed with his life: seen by his opening statement of "In some ways I already am [dead]", and the hateful way he describes his wife - "She wasn't always like this"
• Sexually frustrated: "jerks off" in the shower, and calls it the highlight of his day
• Regrets marrying his wife, seen by his unloving descriptions of her and the line "she wasn't always like this"
• Loves, or at least doesn't hate, his daughter: he wants to help her, but doesn't see how he can - "I wish I could tell her that's all going to pass - but I don't want to lie to her"

"How does the film portray Lester as being 'trapped'?"

His character is portrayed as trapped in almost all of the elements in the scene, from visual hints, to sounds and more obviously in his dialogue. For instance, one of his opening lines is "In a way, I'm dead already", showing how he thinks of his life as insignificant yet unchanging (and the whole "dead" simile is again shown in the position his body changes to when he turns off the alarm clock - it looks like the classic "dead body" position, arms at opposite angles, etcetera.).

He's also shown to be trapped physically by physical objects and visual elements: when he's looking out of the window at his wife, the window's frame looks very similar to a prison cell's bars; when in the shower, he's physically trapped by the shower door; in the first image when he's at work, the columns on the computer monitor have him behind them, representing (again) cell bars.

"How does the music add to the atmosphere and the character of Lester Burnham?"

One of the more noticeable aspects of the music is how repetitive it is, which adds to both the atmosphere and to Lester as a character: it represents Lester as a character, in that he's found his life to be repetitive, possibly to the point where it's become an annoyance to him; the atmosphere is made to feel out-of-place, or uncomfortable, with the pacing of the music not really matching the speed of the scenes - Lester doesn't move all that much, and the other characters don't walk fast either, so a repeatedly fast beat is very out place.

"How has the Mother been portrayed in the classic Father role?"

It's easy to see how the mother has been placed into Lester's rightful role - the stereotypical family hierarchy goes in the order of Father, Mother, Children, in descending order of control, whereas in the film it seems to have shifted the Father's control to the end, so that the other roles of the family have more control than he does. The film furthers this idea through several ways: having both the wife and daughter talk down to him when he's walking to the car, and portraying him as pathetic when he accidentally opens his briefcase; when he's forced to sit in the back seat of the car like a child, whilst the actual child sits in the front with the mother (the car scene also has him being "held down" by his briefcase, again showing how he's being portrayed as trapped). The wife is also up before the man, even though (stereotypically) it's meant to be the other way around - women take longer to get ready, etcetera.