All the beauty of this world washes me like rain and makes me full of gratitude for my humble and stupid life every moment.
This is the last monologue of lester, the male protagonist of the movie "American Beauty". The film, Chinese translated as American Beauty, won five awards at the 72nd Academy Awards in 2000 for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinematography and Best Original Screenplay.
Although this is director Sam Mendes' actual debut, his skillful skills and the connotation conveyed by the film are not at all green. Especially in the refinement of the picture and the use of color, it is a rare work of art.
The film is miniature of a middle-class family, in a black comedy tone, depicting the midlife crisis and family disintegration faced by the male protagonist Lester. The repression of desire and the rebellion against life unveil the bright surface, in fact, everyone's life is a chicken feather.
The grasp of color is a highlight of this film.
The entire film is dominated by a depressing gray and monotonous black and white tone, and this tone is set in the depiction of the neighborhood at the beginning of the film. White walls, gray roofs, plants lost their leaves, leaving only the branches still stubbornly stretching, a full of depression.
Not only the blocks, but also the retro style of lester's home decoration suppresses the air of the whole house, and the densely packed cubicles of offices and the gray walls are almost breathless.
Under such a tone, the director uses the bright red as a collision color, which becomes the driving force for the development of the film's plot and hides a wealth of metaphors.
Red Rose: A bellwether for the survival of husband and wife
The red rose is a red object that appears from time to time in the film, but the presence and absence of the red rose actually represents the proof of the existence or non-existence of the lester husband and wife relationship at that moment.
At the beginning of the film's positioning, the relationship between Lester and his wife was already tense. Wife Carolyn tends the red roses in the garden, and Lester looks at his wife with a contemptuous look through the window of the room. The red of the rose contrasts sharply with the wife's blue-gray coat, and the red rose is also the first red object to enter the film.
Carolyn undoubtedly loves red roses, so there is a bouquet of red roses in the vase in the living room of the family, and a bouquet of red roses on the dinner table of a family of three.
The composition of the dinner is classic, with a pot of bright red roses sitting on the left and right of the table, daughter Jane behind the rose, and the standard triangular composition, implying the daughter's estranged relationship with her parents.
The rose is the only eye-catching element in this frame, and the only object that is related when the husband and wife dialogue camera switches, when the relationship between husband and wife, although not harmonious, is still maintained.
Until the intrusion of a third party in their respective lives, the same dinner table, the roses that were originally placed in the middle disappeared. It was a very unpleasant dinner, lester and carolyn insulting each other, completely breaking up, what kind of husband and wife relationship? At that moment, they became two opposing sides.
Until Lester bought the sports car he had in mind and was in a good mood to see carolyn with a haircut, arousing the desire to be provocative, that a beautiful bouquet of roses could be seen in the house under the camera. Although the teasing failed with an untimely interruption, the couple's relationship did not seem to be as tense as before.
The last time the roses in the house appear, it is also the last night of the film, which also vaguely hints at the final change of heart of lester on that rainy night.
Red: A sign of inner release
Carolyn is a strong woman in the movie, as a real estate agent, she has a great passion for work, even in the extreme sadness, will try to restrain herself, through the almost paranoid self-suggestion to suppress her emotions, in order to maintain a hypocritical appearance.
Carolyn's appearance, dressed in a blue-gray professional outfit, is in tune with the identity of a professional woman, but it is also monotonous. When she was cleaning alone in the apartment for sale and taking off her professional coat, we saw the wrapped rose-red underwear and the heart that it represented to release herself.
In marriage and career, Carolyn is also suppressing herself. And as the red color on her clothes slowly turns from the inside out, we also feel that her inner self is constantly being released.
The first change in the color of carolyn's coat was the dinner she had first seen after her affair, and the pale red of her blouse resembled a passion that had not yet completely faded after she had unleashed it, and a testament to the gradual overflow of the soul of her repressed self.
At the end, when Carolyn appears in a bright red coat, her love and career seem to reach a happy climax, completely saving the inner soul, but also falling into the abyss of loss.
Red petals: impulsiveness and masculinity under sexual fantasies
Buried under a large expanse of red petals, Angela is the film's most aesthetically designed image.
Red is often used in association with sex. When Lester saw his daughter's classmate Angela, he was inextricably attracted to her, and the walking corpse life was suddenly injected with infinite energy.
Angela's very provocative appearance, in the image of lester sexual fantasy, red petals bursting out of the open chest, and the desires and impulses under the temptation are like a flood.
A man who has been despised by his wife and daughter for many years and has no place in the family at all, has found his spring under this new temptation.
In the white bathtub, which symbolized purity lay a naked girl, red petals scattered all over the bathtub, lester fantasized about himself leaning over the bathtub, and the sleeping sexual desire and manhood were finally awakened.
Red Blood: The end of violence or rebirth
The first time the film shows blood is in the boy Ricky's room, where the father, Colonel Colonel, discovers that his son has opened his locker without permission, and he beats up his son violently. In this equally repressive family, the rare red color appears in this form.
Lester was shot, bright red blood splattered on the white walls, covering the tabletops and dripping to the ground. The scene is somewhat bloody, especially through Ricky's eyes, and the close-up shot of lester lying in a pool of blood, blood and brain plasma flowing everywhere, this is the most violent shot in the film.
Colonel Conlonel's white T-shirt was stained with red blood, which only made the ending of the story more confusing. However, Lester's death is more of a rebirth, a kind of review and understanding from God's perspective.
The metaphor of color is much more than that in this film, and under a series of red alerts, the film finally pushes the picture back to the still depressed street, as if nothing had happened.
In addition to the color carving, the life understanding of this film is even more all-encompassing, with only a few strokes, and it seems to have written all kinds of things in the world.
However, whether it is repression, pain, or impulsiveness, happiness, we must calmly cope, even if the beauty of the world can not be found, returning to the self, to be the most authentic self, is the ultimate way out of the shackles.
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