In the film Devdas, the camera encompasses around a beautiful mansion as a family rejoices with the news of the character Devdas return from London. Around five minutes into the film a scene takes place in, what I would call, the living room of the mansion, where the family speaks of their joy and excitement. Hanging behind at the back of the room are arches with green translucent drapes. Translucent drapes like this reappear all throughout the film. A few minutes later, Pero almost dances with a white one as she tries to swat away a fly. Moments after, she then releases black drapes around her bed when she dismisses Devdas without letting him see her.
Many different color translucent type of fabrics are used hanging throughout the film. However, the only other green fabric I spotted was in the dressing room of the brothel, and on Chandramukhi herself. Here, green fabric was again draped from arches, but this fabric was embellished with gold and silver circled gems. I found it interesting that the green was shown again in such a drastic different environment from the mansion. However, I noticed that they both showed themselves in scenes where the setting was entirely new to the audience. Additionally, green is a color that signifies money, which could illuminate the money of Devdas' family as well as the constant flow of money that men pay for the girls in a brothel. This idea makes each environment seem more desirable to the audience and the characters in the story line.
You've done some really nice work here, Michelle. You've got a good eye for recurring details and their significance to the film's structures and concerns (the exclusive uses of green among the myriad appearances of illuminated cloth, for instance). But it's your closing mark that's most promising (even if it remains underdeveloped here). Like you say, the color green transfers across the radically different contexts of the living room and the brothel-and it links in turn to the question of money. What this observation of yours serves to point out is the way every film serves as a repository of its own unfulfilled potential (in that the images and sounds are far too complex to ever fully be deployed in every possible way). The link to money can help facilitate critical analysis of the film (it's tacit linking of musical performance to prostitution, for instance--a prevalent subtending premise in many Indian films). And it can also help prompt creative ideas. (Imagine a cut from a bolt of colored fabric to a piece of paper currency, in the same fashion of Altman's milk-glass segue...).
ReplyDelete100/100
CS