Last few weeks, when my lecturer talks about colour, he introduced a film to us, Hero.
This is a Chinese wuxia（武侠） film directed by Zhang Yimou （张艺谋） in 2002. This film has a strong casts such as Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Donnie Yen, Zhang Ziyi and Chen Daoming. The story is based on the Chinese History of Jing Ke's assassination attempt on the King of Qin in 227 BC.
The colour performance of this film made me surprised as I seldom see this kind of colour performance in other Chinese films. I think this is the reason why Hero can get so many awards such as Golden Bauhinia Awards Best Cinematography, Hong Kong Film Awards Best Cinematography, New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Cinematographer and etc.
In this film, Zhang Yimou uses different colour to represent different plots, characters and the felling of specific scenes.
Black. The film starts with black tone to emphasis the heavy atmosphere in the Qin Palace. Black colour usually gives the feeling of power and death. This can be explain that the King of Qin is the most powerful man in this dynasty. Everyone must obey him.
Red. Red colour usually gives the feeling of blood, war, energy, danger and passion. In the scene where Nameless goes to the calligraphy school in the Zhao state where Flying Snow and Broken Sword were also there, the whole scene mostly is in red colour set up. The people also wear in red. This shows that they probably in deadly danger because the Qin army is approaching to them. Most of the the pupils in the school also die when the Qin army start to shoot the school with millions of arrows. In this version of story, Long Sky, Flying Snow, Broken Sword and Moon are all dead, leaving Nameless alone with his anger to go to the Qin Palace to assassinate the King of Qin. Red represents anger, impulse and death.
Blue. Blue colour normally gives the feeling of sky and sea, stability, loyalty, wisdom, intelligence, truth and etc. When King of Qin found out that Nameless was actually the assassin who wants to kill him, he didn't panic, he even comes out his own version of story to seek the truth. Blue represent peaceful and calm at this point.
In King's version of story, Nameless has to kill either Flying Snow or Broken Sword to "prove" that he has killed both of them so that he can get close enough to the king in palace. Snow and Sword are arguing who should be the one to die, they both are willing to sacrifice. At last, Snow manages to injured Sword so that she can be the one who fight with Nameless (to die). Snow shows her stability and calmness when she facing Nameless and the Qin army (face her death). Snow and Sword are both loyal to their pure and beautiful love.
Green. Green colour gives the feeling of life, nature, harmony, freshness, safety and environment. In the scene where Broken Sword fights with King of Qin three years ago but he did not kill the king, Sword wears in green and the curtains in Qin palace are all in green. Sword did not kill King of Qin bacause he wants the country to be unified and peaceful, and only the King of Qin can achieve this vision. The green colour here shows they all desires the safe, harmony and peaceful life in this Warring States period.
White. White always associated with light, innocence, purity, cleanliness and death (in Chinese's belief). White colour are used at the last part of the story, when Flying Snow found that Broken Sword had convinced Nameless not to kill the king. She attacks Sword and unintentionally kills him when he choose not to defend himself so that she would know his feelings to her. Snow was so sad and sorrow, she kills herself and die together with Sword. White colour represents their pure love and the dreary dead.
Colour can brings out the different feelings to us while we are watching the film. The good colour performance can emphasize the deeper meaning that the director wants to tel us. I hope that I can learn to use colour in my animation in order to enhance the narrative.
References :
