In Sam Mendes’ American Beauty, there is a deliberate use of the color red throughout the film. The color is a clear representation of life and death, as the movie’s main theme is about both and how they go hand in hand. In the first scene, the narrator and main character, Lester, played by Kevin Spacey, is pointing out how his wife’s clogs match the handles on her pruning shears as she works on her garden. We see her cut a red rose close up, and then in the next shot is from far away, showing her gardening, and all of the flowers are red roses. Even before this happens in the movie, Lester tells the audience that in a year, he’ll be dead. So we already know this movie is about Lester, his life, and then his death. With the shot pulled …show more content…
There’s also when he’s laying in bed and looking up at the ceiling and fantasizing about her there, and she’s naked, covered in red rose petals, and she’s laying on a bed of red rose petals, and then while he’s staring up at her red rose petals fall into his face. There’s also his fantasy when she’s in a bathtub and red roses are covering her naked form on top of the water. Most of his fantasies about her involve the red rose petals, and in the end scene when they almost have sex, and he first sees her down there, there’s a vase of red roses next to where she’s standing. It’s interesting Lester lusting after Angela is what “wakes him up” from being “so sedated” and what makes him start to really live again, but she inadvertently, through no fault of her own, is what kickstarts the events that lead to his death. All the red that surrounds her throughout the film is kind of telling us that she is the reason Lester died, even though she had no control over what happened and it wasn’t her fault. But Lester lusting after her and wanting to be someone she would be set him off on changing his life and making it better, more fun, and doing what he wanted to do, not what everyone else wanted him to do. All the rose petals, that also represent (her) beauty, innocence, romance - life, essentially - also represent her as death, in a way. Lester’s death. And the color red that surrounds her shows that. There’s also the fact that the roses in the vase next to where she’s standing in the end are shrouded in darkness as well. She no longer represents any form of life for Lester, because within the hour he’ll be