American Beauty Themes

The tagline for American Beauty is "Look closer," so you don't need to watch even a minute of the movie to know that looking past the surface is going to be important. In fact, that message is so k...

Some critics of American Beauty really want to focus on the whole "critique of American life" angle, but really, this is a movie about love and family (with some sex mixed in too, of course). Sure,...

The love/sex and family/marriage themes in American Beauty are definitely related, but they're still unique. The film ends up drawing a line between the satisfaction that comes from marriage and fa...

Well, the movie begins with Lester telling us (via voiceover) that he'll be dead within the year, so right from the start, American Beauty has death on the brain. We spend the whole movie waiting f...

Sure, this theme is linked up with death, but it occupies its very own place of honor in American Beauty. While references to death are often used to create magical, meaningful moments, violent inc...