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The three primary colors are red, green and blue. Our eyes are designed this way, except at night when the rods in our eyes are active, and they don’t see red. It could be the reason why we feel night is blue or green or anything in between. We accept it in cinema, because it’s intuitively a part of us.
During the day the sky is blue. That blue reflected onto seas, lakes and rivers makes a lot of blue all around us. Our planet is called the blue planet, so it’s not hard to understand why our eyes would have adapted to understand blue.
Green is everywhere too, on trees and plants. It’s directly tied to life, and crucial for our survival. It’s no surprise our eyes have evolved to understand green.
We understand brown, the color of earth, mud, sand, our own skin. We understand the yellow orange of fire, of the sun at dawn and dusk. We also understand red, though red is hard to come by in nature. Sure there are plants, flowers and animals with red in them, but those are not prevalent everywhere, and not crucial to our survival.
The sky turns red sometimes, but only sometimes, and not everywhere geographically. Red is important to us, because red is the color of blood. Red is also the color of the muscle tissue within us, again because of the color of blood. Red is personal.
Early cave painters used ochre to paint caves. For special occasions, they preferred red ochre, which is rarer.
Why do we have this fascination for red? Studies have shown red is probably the color that has the strongest emotional reaction in most humans. What kind of emotion? Red has been associated with many things.
Red signifies danger. Traffic signs are in red, danger signs are in red.
Red signifies anger, and we even have a phrase for it, “seeing red”.
Red signifies sex. You might have heard of red-light districts. They’re quite common around the world. What’s more common are menstrual cycles, childbirth and the signs of losing virginity. It’s life written in blood.
Red also signifies wealth and good fortune in many parts of the world.
The significance of a color is never etched in stone, you can make any color signify anything. However, most of us can agree that if there’s red in the frame, your eye is drawn to it.
Maybe this is one of the reasons why a large majority of countries have red in their flags.
Red just has that power. Many filmmakers use red selectively to drive impact. It could be something plain and in your face, like the girl in the red dress in The Matrix, or the girl in the red dress in Schindler’s List. The first signifies lust, the second death and innocence.
Red can also be used boldly, as in Pedro Almodovar’s All about my mother. The color red accompanies tragedy after tragedy, and I got the distinct feeling that red signified weeping, or mourning. It pervades every scene to underlie that emotion.
Red is also used for love. Who can forget the rose petal scene from American Beauty, or Wong Kar Wai’s use of red throughout In the Mood for Love? Same color, different emotions.
Sometimes Red is picked for reasons best understood by the filmmaker. A good example is Three Colours: Red. This film is part of a trilogy of films. The other two being Three Colours: Blue and White. The colors are taken from the French flag.
Countless words have been written about the significance of the color red in Three Colours: Red, but director Kiezlowski throws cold water on it:
“… the money [to fund the films] is French. If the money had been of a different nationality we would have titled the films differently, or they might have had a different cultural connotation. But the films would probably have been the same”.
You can see similar color choices being made by the Marvel Universe. Most heroes have costumes made of colors that are taken from the American flag. A different flag would have meant a different costume. That’s as much symbolism as they were willing to dive into.
Sometimes red is picked in all seriousness. In The Color of Pomegranates red is used explicitly for dramatic impact. It has ties to the colors of old Armenia. However, the title was not the first choice of filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. The subject of the film is the life of poet Sayat-Nova. Yet, today, the film is tied inextricably to the color red. It has become the subject of the film itself, though that was not the original intention.
Red can be used for awe, as in the case of Hero. It looks spectacular, and goes with the film’s theme of delineating characters and their situations.
And lastly, Red can also be used as an idea. A message. Let’s look at how Red is used in Raising the Red Lantern. This is a film to which red has an inextricable link.
The story is about a young concubine who must join three others in a bleak house they can’t escape from. The house has old customs that everyone is expected to strictly follow. The most relevant custom is the lighting of red lanterns outside the home of the concubine the master decides to spend the night with.
It’s an elaborate choreographed ritual. Someone announces which house will have its lanterns lit that night, and nobody else is allowed to light red lanterns during that period. Everyone fights for the privilege of having red lanterns lit outside their homes, even the servants.
The master’s orders are embodied via red lanterns. We don’t really get to see the master clearly, or understand who he is, but the red lantern signifies his ever prevalent wishes. Even when he’s not present, the red lanterns are always lit inside the concubine’s rooms, to remind them of his grip over their fates. They are prisoners there, and they can’t ever forget it.
The color red is also a message. Other objects in the film can also take on the color red, to carry this message. For example, a messenger brings a message from the master, carrying a red umbrella.
In another scene, the wives are wearing clothes with different degrees of red in them. The fourth wife, with whom the master finds the most favor right now, is bathed in red. The third wife has less red on her clothes, the second even less, and the first wife has hardly any red, if at all.
In the final shot of the film, our protagonist surrounds herself with red lanterns, resigned to her fate. Very few films use color directly in this way. Though the key takeaway is you as a filmmaker gets to decide what a color signifies. There are no absolute rules when it comes to color. As strong as our reaction is to the color red, its significance is open to interpretation, and highly subjective, which is why few filmmakers can resist using it.
What are some great films you know with red as the dominant color?