Childlike manners

As well as all the ideas about appreciating the world, American Beauty also sees Lester turn back into a childlike state. He reverts back to his youth, or at least tries to. 
But in doing so, he loses a sense of awareness. In trying to live as a teenager, he begins to lose a sense of what is really around him: his family and the choices he is making. It is interesting how a mid-life crisis could result in such misfortune.

Before I began looking at colour symbolism I created these experiments, looking at mark making. In the mark making I reverted myself back to youth, in creating images out of finger prints.
It was a simple way to create marks in a way that can be done so easily but it does seem rather relevant.

The first experiment was simply finger prints, but they
reminded me of faces.

I then moved on to emphasise this look and created a
crowd 

I then took the idea of a crowd further and tried to
create a depth within it - I added in the white along with
the original blacks, but before doing so, I added four simple
red prints. The image became very busy but the red was still
very visible.
I liked the sense of isolation this created, in singling out the
red prints, despite their being hidden in a crowd.

I liked how the red was subtle but stand out. 

As was mentioned briefly in my previous post, I have wanted to look at Schindler's List here, for it's iconic girl in the red coat:

In a way, in looking at the films that I have, the colour red seems symbolic of youth. I would not say that this is a typical connotation of the word or colour but in how I have viewed it, it seems to become relevant when looking at this area. The girl in the red coat, the demise of one re-enacting their youth. 

I would like to develop this idea further.