How Our Culture is Represented in American Beauty
In 1999, Sam Mendes released his comedic drama film that was nominated for 8 Oscars and won 5, including Best Picture. The movie, American Beauty , is about two families whose members are all trying to achieve happiness in different ways. To achieve happiness, the characters go either with or against society’s norms. This takes place throughout the entire movie and explores the different ways people search for happiness, along with the positive and negative results of their actions. The theme of American Beauty is that the pursuit of happiness is the driving force in everyone’s life, but is overall an impossible task to complete unless it is through death. The film explores how each character is set on achieving happiness and how it is always the most important thing to them, no matter how it affects other people around them. American Beauty was made in the very late 1990’s and was also set in the same time period. The film reflects the time it was made in several ways