Colors Speak A Thousand Words By Natalie Pool

By Natalie Pool

How filmmakers use color to tell their stories without even saying anything, and how we reflect that in our own lives.

From the moment we are born, we are exposed to color to support our growth and development. In my experience, I have always associated colors with certain phases of my life, whether that's the color of my walls, my favorite color at the time, or just the colors I saw during monumental moments. What gets a little lost in film is how color can influence characters and the audience’s perception in the same way. Color symbolism and the use of color theory have proved themselves useful in cinema and literature time and time again, but how do we see it become prevalent in our own lives?

Most people’s first exposure to color symbolism and color theory is through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. While some students found the book more complicated than it needed to be because of its use of color, I found it quite fascinating how much could be inferred from the names West and East Egg, the color of Gatsby’s car, and Daisy’s name. The heavy use of symbolism almost made the book feel like two stories in my mind, because there was a deeper world within it that readers could pick apart and explore to understand the characters and the story truly. With this book being taught in schools, a lot of people tend to overlook the depth of this story because it was for a school assignment and just another task on the agenda. Still, it is the first piece of art we are taught to look deeper into because there is an entire unknown world between the lines.

One of the most notable subsequent films to the novel is La La Land, written and directed by Damien Chazelle. The entire storyline is told through color theory to show how Mia and Sebastian’s lives intertwine before they go their separate ways and slowly grow into the people they once dreamed of being. Mia and Sebastian have their own set of colors, and once they begin a romantic relationship, those colors mix and change as we see their connection deepen. This is a beautiful symbol of how we integrate our lives with someone else’s when we find a deep connection of that sense. La La Land perfectly shows what it means to find someone you think is your “happily ever after,” but once that connection is finished, your life can still hold the same beauty it once did when you were with that person, just in a different tone.

La La Land was mistakenly announced as Best Picture at the Oscars, which is ironic, considering the film that actually won Best Picture also draws much of its storytelling power from its colors. Moonlight by Barry Jenkins is a film following the life of Chiron as he goes through hardships of violence, an addicted mother, and a battle with his own sexuality; the film does a beautiful job of showing what it means to accept yourself for who you truly are despite what society tries to force you to be. The film is based on the play, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney. When you think of this film after watching it, the first color that comes to mind is blue, as the tones of blue are associated with the different phases of Chiron’s life. It is a beautiful symbol of what it means to stay true to yourself as you figure yourself out, hence the change in tone. The film’s final shot of young Chiron standing on the beach, looking back at the audience, sums up the film beautifully, as it represents that he has finally reached a place in life his younger self would be proud of and feel safe in. The scene is the epitome of blue, which represents Chiron.

There are so many ways to differentiate the phases we go through as people, and color is one of the most profound. As humans, we are always finding ways to associate relationships, people, and places with more abstract concepts to help us process how we feel about them. As we do, we reflect those associations into art and make them into something greater. So much can be told about our lives through the colors we are drawn to in that moment, as they are often a telltale sign of our emotional state and where we are in our lives. Continue to look for the beautiful ways color creeps into your life because it might be more telling of who you are and where you are than you think.