Color Codes

So the latest movie I watched is Hero with Jet Li. One of the things that really stood out to me was the director's usage of color to tell the story. Throughout the movie the characters who were connected to the Qin Empire tended to have a darker, more drab style of dress with very little color showing at all. Yimou Zhang, the director of the had this done because the chief color of the actual Qin Empire was black. In the picture below, the director had red added to some of those members of the army to distinguish their importance of rank. You can also see here that Jet Li (in this movie he was known as "nameless") is covered in black but does not have any red or any other color used in distinguishing him. This dress is similar to that of what the Emperor wore. This similarity in color was used to show their connection. At the begining of the movie, we are led to believe that Jet Li's character and the Emperor are born of the same tribe, however we later find out that Jet Li was born of the Xia rather than of the Qin. This then throws the meaning of the similarity in his costume color and that of the color of the Qin Emperor's robes into question. However at the close of the movie we find that Jet Li, although his background is different from the Emperor, their ideals remain the same. Both wish to see the bloodshed and warring between the 6 Kingdoms of China to end. It is this similarity of ideals that gives new meaning to their similar color, even though "nameless" is from a different kingdom than that of the Emperor, he is still able to see the reasoning behind the Emperor's conquest of all of China.

Aonther example of the use of color in this movie is during several of the fight scenes. In these scenes, the characters clothes are colored in such a way that at first glance it seems to simply show the alliance of the various characters. The meaning, then in this photo is to show that both character's in this sequence are allied, however they are fighting because of the circumstances that have transpired thus far in the movie. As a result, two colleagues are forced into battle because of previous events.




In this clip from the movie you can see how Yimou Zhang utilized the color green to distinguish the differences between the Emperor (who is wearing all black) from Broken Sword, who is clothed in green like his mistress, Snow.

From the usage of color in this particular scene I was able to grasp the depth and the importance of this one fight. During the movie there are essentially 4 battles. This particular battle is the most pivotal in the entire movie. I believe that this fact is driven home by the very vivid and distinct use of color throughout this portion of the film.