Scholars and academics have offered many possible readings of American Beauty ; film critics are similarly divided , not so much about the quality of the film , as their interpretations of it . Described by many as about " the meaning of life " or " the hollow existence of the American suburbs " , the film has defied categorization by even the filmmakers . Mendes is indecisive , saying the script seemed to be about something different each time he read it : " a mystery story , a kaleidoscopic journey through American suburbia , a series of love stories ; [ ... ] it was about imprisonment , [ ... ] loneliness , [ and ] beauty . It was funny ; it was angry , sad . " The literary critic and author Wayne C. Booth concludes that the film resists any one interpretation : " [ American Beauty ] cannot be adequately summarized as ' here is a satire on what 's wrong with American life ' ; that plays down the celebration of beauty . It is more tempting to summarize it as ' a portrait of the beauty underlying American miseries and misdeeds ' , but that plays down the scenes of cruelty and horror , and Ball 's disgust with our mores . It cannot be summarized with either Lester or Ricky 's philosophical statements about what life is or how one should live . " He argues that the problem of interpreting the film is tied with that of finding its center — a controlling voice who " [ unites ] all of the choices " . He contends that in American Beauty 's case , it is neither Mendes nor Ball . Mendes considers the voice to be Ball 's , but even while the writer was " strongly influential " on set , he often had to accept deviations from his vision , particularly ones that transformed the cynical tone of his script into something more optimistic . With " innumerable voices intruding on the original author 's , " Booth says , those who interpret American Beauty " have forgotten to probe for the elusive center " . According to Booth , the film 's true controller is the creative energy " that hundreds of people put into its production , agreeing and disagreeing , inserting and cutting " .