The Color Red In Director Sam Mendes’ American Beauty, Cinematographer Conrad Hall utilizes great lengths of visual silence to signify the enveloping, jarring presence of Lester Burnham’s own, imaginary world. Conrad Hall also creates startling visual silence when intensely focusing upon each character of American Beauty, and consistently morphs the lack of apparent objects into an inconspicuous focus on the striking color of Red. Through this enigmatic color, Conrad incessantly portrays the goal and lifelong desire of every character in the movie, starting with Lester Burnham. Each character is faced with a dream that is not recognized starting from the opening scene, but becomes gradually apparent through the blatant indication of Conrad’s color choice on various objects in each subsequent plot point. There are numerous shades of red as well; contrasting between each character’s superficial appearance, such as Jane’s distinct albeit crude lipstick, and the essential, authentic item of desire, such as Angela Haye’s falling rose petals in Lester’s fantasies. With the brilliant amalgamation of red and specified isolation of Lester, Jane, Carolyn and Ricky, along with the enveloping shades of gray in between, Conrad imparts a language of film unique to his own perspective: telling a story not through the conversations of character, but through the stark contrasts of color and use of varied visual silence. Lester Burnham first sights the color red through the lovely, soft rose pedals of Angela Haye. During his fantasies, the color red overflows the screen, engulfing Lester in a scream for his true desire and goal: Angela. Or so it seems throughout the whole movie. Lester’s clear connection with the color red is the most obvious out of all the characters; therefore, it is ultimately the vitality and youthful life Angela has (or seems to have), but not Angela