After thinking over the film, Far From Heaven and reading the chapter on “Color”, it’s clear that the color functions in several different ways and encapsulates varies meanings as it does so. In a sense, the story is being told just as clearly through the colors that are displayed on the screen as it is through the characters’ dialogue. Beside the more obvious functions of the color, a symbol of season and change, I found there are two that particularly interested me in trying to analyze and understand the film as it uses color so intensely to tell its story.
The first is the use of color as a sense of expressionism. The colors Cathy wore in the film were usually different from that of her husband’s. While she wore a warm soft orange, he was dressed in dark deep blues and grays. However, the colors which Raymond wore more often than not matched those of Cathy’s; as he was usually presented in complementary greens and browns. I think this could be easily tied with the idea of expressionism in the sense that the colors represented what the characters were feeling, and Cathy and Raymond were able to relate to one another because their feelings were similar.
I also found the use of color so interesting because I think it functioned ironically and affected the general message and story pretty profoundly. The story itself is depressing, and I think that the use of the warm fall colors really softened the sadness of the film. It’s a great ironic contrast, and I think it works beautifully. Had the colors been darker I think that the film would have had such a more intensely negative feel to it that it almost wouldn’t have been enjoyable to watch from an audience point of view.
Overall, I really enjoyed the film because it really touched on so many different issues of race and gender. In particular, I found the last scene of the film, where Cathy stands lonely and completely abandoned by her male companions as well as female friends, to be extremely powerful and symbolic of the female role in that time period.
In that last scene, Cathy is wearing a red-orange coat and the lavender scarf on her hair; what do these colors have to say about that scene and what is happening there?
ReplyDeleteI agree that color has so much to do with the moods of this film and often give a false sense of positive energy to otherwise negative plot occurrences or emotions portrayed. Haynes is known for this; he employs it in his film Safe as well (also starring Julianne Moore).