American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes and The Virgin Suicides, directed by Sofia Coppola

Her trial, which started 10 months after the murders, was lead by what towns’ people called the “dream team” of lawyers. The jury had 12 men on it that believed that she was not guilty because after they showed her the skull of her father in court, she fainted, and because she was a girl. They thought that no girl was capable of committing such a crime.

Nearly everyone in the world can be classified with some sort of mental or psychological disorder, whether it’s a big “problem” or just something small and rather unnoticable. Since film making became possible, people have been producing movies with a character that has some sort of psychological or mental disorder. Within the last 20 years, American Psycho, Shutter Island, and The Black Swan, have all had strong in their message and meaning in the mental disorder community. American Psycho and The Black Swan deal with borderline personality disorders in both of the main characters, while Shutter Island is more about post traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder. Movies dealing with characters with mental or psychological disorders are harder to portray, but if they can be portrayed correctly, they are likely to be some of the best movies you have ever seen.

She has been trained to trust in her husband blindly and sees no other way. He calls her “little girl” (352) and “little goose” (349) and states “She will be as sick as she pleases!” (352) whenever she tries to express her issues. Instead of fighting for what she thinks will make her better she accepts it and keeps pushing her feelings aside, while he treats her like a child. We get an instant feel for her problem in the first page when she says, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that” (pg 346). A woman shouldn’t expect her husband to laugh at her concerns. Even after briefly writing about her condition she remembers her husband telling her the very worst thing she can do is think about it and follows his instructions. This is when she begins to focus on the house instead of her problems and the obsession with the wallpaper starts. She has nothing else to think about alone in the home; they don’t even allow her to write, which she has to do in secret.

When I was told to choose a movie to perform a psychoanalysis on a character. I did not know what movie to choose. After watching the two hour long film on the multiple characters that seemed to be struggling to find their inner happiness: American Beauty. I knew that I should not look any further. One character that especially stood out was, Lester Burnham. A forty-two year old father with a mid-life crisis. In the film, American Beauty Lester Burnham is portrayed as an ordinary man, with a perfect life, but of course that is far from the truth. From the outside, Lester seems to have a perfect salary, and a perfect family who lives in a perfect neighborhood. In reality, things are not

Many people have obsessions, but most do not take it to the extremes that they kill because of it. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” represents the blindness that happens when someone takes an obsession to the extreme and ignores the consequences of inept actions that result in deadly consequences. Aylmer, the husband, becomes obsessed with a “crimson birthmark” shaped like a small hand that is on the cheek of Georgiana, the wife. Alymer view the birthmark as a stain to his sensibilities and views on what is a “perfect” form based on his egotistic view of his wife. Unfortunately, his decent into madness sucks up even his wife into a mucky pool full of fear and self-loathing. She does this all just to please her husband, which ultimately results in her death. More then once I have heard that obsessed people are evil. Obsession by itself does not make a person evil. Obsession to the point that safety and life are put at risk is

Feeling happy about their choices in life I feel lead to a peaceful death because they had everything they ever wanted which was each other.

The agonized expressions on the faces of her two sisters; the terror of their children, who were

Andrea Yates was a mother of five who lived in a Houston suburb. Andrea suffered from serve postpartum depression and psychosis which unfortunately lead her to drown all five of children in a bath tub one afternoon. Andrea was charged with capital murder and was given life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. However, she filed an appeal, and her original sentence was overturned, and she was found in innocent in 2006 on reason of insanity. I’m going to explain her upbringing and her mental health influenced her to murdering her children.

Perry wanted to spare the mother’s hurt but it didn’t spare Dick any harm. Perry and Dick were sentenced to the Death Penalty. Sentencing two people together could be tricking but it can help by getting each side of the story and could save time in court. Since Perry and Dick were together at the crime scene then they should be tried together. So the Insanity plea was not appropriate for this trial. Once the sentence was given Perry and Dick were taken to a home by the prison to stay while on Death Row for four years. Once the four years came to an end they were then hanged for the murders of Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon Clutter. The Clutter’s were just a regular family who helped everyone that they could. They were willing to drop things they were doing to help someone in need. They were the type of family that always made people feel good. The Clutter’s were murdered on November 14th of 1959.

In both movies characters escape reality in order to keep their image of the perfect family. In Pleasantville, escaping from reality is done primarily conducted by David. It is suggested in Adams’s review that David comes from a broken family. Due to him striving for a perfect family, “David finds comfort in the nostalgia of a 50’s sitcom” (Adams). However, even when David gets engulfed in the sitcom and is finally apart of the Parker family, he realizes that even the family that he admired as perfect, was in fact far from perfect. Adam’s idea of escaping from reality is also portrayed in American Beauty. For example, Lester and his wife do not have sex anymore. Due to that frustration, Lester takes on a sexual interest in Jane’s friend, Angela. However, if Lester went forth with that sexual desire and actually had a sexual encounter with Angela, then could had completely ruin his image of his perfect family. First, he would be cheating on his wife, even though she already cheated on him and secondly, ruin his relationship with his daughter. In both movies the characters, it is these fantasy, which spark their improvement of self. For example, David tries to have a better relationship with his mother and Lester, starts doing things, like getting in shape, which betters

In Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, I believe the movie's design has a unified feel. By understanding Anderson's approach to cinematography, we can tell that the costume and visual designs ensemble a true Wes Anderson's film. In fact, he is indulged with patterns and lively colors. His plot mainly reflects an old- fashioned, nostalgic feel and he is a bit playful with camerawork. On the other hand, the Grand Budapest really feel like a lively, happy hotel. The use of colors and contrasting hues made the setting almost looks like a painting. For example, the frame narrative where the Grand Budapest Hotel became the setting, the mise-en-scène and the lighting of the film become almost too symmetrical and mannered, especially during the

American Beauty is a movie that sets in suburban America. The story is about Lester, whom is a middle-aged writer working in a magazine company. He was having a midlife crisis where he felt lonely and numbed by continuous unchanging routine of his everyday life. In the movie, his wife portrayed as a successful real estate agent, but she was also going through her own midlife crisis in both her career and personal life. Lester’s daughter, Jane Bumham had alienated her parents and was going through puberty. They have a new neighbor who is a U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Frank Fitts, and he has a son, Ricky Fitts, who is a drug dealer. Lester was going to get fired from his company that he had worked for fourteen

Steven Avery, a family man, a victim of injustice and an accused murderer. One may have reasoned that his murder conviction was a crime of passion, due to the injustice Steven suffered from his 1985 false conviction of rape and assault, but that may have been before his story caught national attention. A documentary, “Making a Murderer”, directed by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, arose from his story’s infamy. With this documentary came numerous questions as to Avery’s possible innocence, but above all else answers that shed light on a possibly corrupt justice system that appears intent on framing Steven Avery for Teresa Halbach’s murder. “Making a Murderer” effectively portrays a message of the injustice of Steven Avery’s murder conviction and possible corruption within the Manitowoc’s justice system through the use of footage and accounts from people who were involved with his conviction.

“American Beauty”, the 1999 film, is a motion picture that more or less shows a different side of the average suburban family. Although all of the characters have significant issues, I have chosen to take a closer look at Lester Burnham. Lester Burnham is a 42-year-old businessman who is married to the career-obsessed Carolyn and they have one daughter, a teenager named Jane. One of the first scenes of the movie explains how the family works: Carolyn is driving, just like she “drives” the family, Jane is sitting right next to her in the front seat, and Lester is slouched in the backseat, visually becoming more miserable by the second.

‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ (Wes Anderson, 2014) combines a perfect mix of nostalgia and history. The film explores the themes of war as it recreates history through mise-en-scene. Anderson also incorporates other themes such as racism and elitism during pre-war Europe. The film widely explores Europe from many viewpoints, one of which is of Mr Moustafa. His nostalgia is seen through flashbacks of when he was a lobby boy that went by the name of Zero. As an audience the depth of his nostalgia is seen through mise-en-scene. With the help of cinematography and props we see can see the time and place that Moustafa acknowledges. Anderson shows how history is reimagined through ones nostalgia. Mr Moustafa recalls events, which he was not present in yet he explains them as if he were there. This also shows how one reimagines history from another due to emotions and personal attachment. Despite the outcome being the same there are many viewpoints it can be seen from.