The Emotional Impact of Colors in Wong Karwai’s early Films & Learnings for Film Colorists
Part IV: Colors of Emotion in ‘Happy Together’
HAPPY TOGETHER (1997)
Happy Together tells the story of a young male Hongkong couple, Lai (played by Tony Leung) and Ho (Leslie Cheung), who move to Argentina in search of a better future and a way to salvage their love, but who get stuck in existential frustrations, jealousy and a struggle for survival that affects their relationship.
After a long introductory black and white flashback, a toxic cycle ensues, one of mutual infatuation and destructive jealousy, of breaking up and getting back together and with both men remaining trapped in the emotional conflict of needing an escape while still wanting to preserve their love.
Red in Happy Together – A Dance of Love and Rejection
Wong Karwai infuses tug-of-war moments of destructive brutality and heart-breaking tenderness with a sensitive, purposeful deployment of red. The visual context/ environment of the opening scenes set (set in the present, after the extended B/W flashback) is defined by luminous mono-chrome dirty-yellow/greenish hues, a visual environment in which the strategically placed, lushly saturated darker red elements stand out in a highly assertive, almost aggressive way.
The color-related interpretive line between red’s traditional connotation with affection and romance within the context of their initial tension-laden love scene, and its other equally conventional associations with tension, anger and aggression, is titillatingly blurred. The human and narrative tension is palpable, of course, as we are thrown into the midst of their troubled and highly volatile relationship.
The color choice and deployment against this visual context serves to underscore this tension, demonstrating that color manipulation should always be subjected to narrative intent, and not the other way round by blindly relying on colors’ traditional associative baggage.
Otherwise, the story, no matter how expertly crafted and produced, may run the risk of drowning in cliché and stereotype.
[25 – Happy Together, Wong Karwai, HK 1997: Male lovers Lai and Ho during initial scenes of simultaneous conflict and tenderness]
The red blanket in this scene, for instance, visually unites and separates the men as Ho attempts to force his affection upon a reluctant, almost hostile Lai.
The background environment in their run-down apartment, including the men themselves, is kept almost mono-chromatic, making the red not only stand out prominently but effectively enticing the audience to project their own feelings and meaning onto what is happening here, while at the same time maintaining a high degree of ambiguity as to the protagonists’ interplay of friction and tenderness.
[26 – Happy Together, Wong Karwai, HK 1997: Ho attempts to force his affection onto Lai, in a playful yet tension-laden atmosphere]
When Lai then disappears into the kitchen to get some food, he drapes himself in his black-red-striped blanket which, in a de-saturated light cyan-yellow background, not only visually amplifies his momentary anger, but effectively conveys another important narrative element: the inability of the protagonists to escape their present situation, their relationship and mutual infatuation against existential anxieties and frustrations. Here, the color red, in a sense, keeps them chained to each other, shackled to a life that, as they have realized, fails to make either of them happy.
Happy, as in “happy together”.
[27 – Happy Together, Wong Karwai, HK 1997: Lai in the kitchen]
And yet, when it comes to genuinely tender, loving moments between the two men, a subdued, lighter and de-saturated red hue defines the emotional experience and impact – as opposed to the deeper, saturated red we saw in those earlier tension-laden moments and which is often the preferred but painfully clichéd cinematic choice among less sensitively inclined filmmakers (and insecure Joker-look-selling YouTubers) to cue “romance”.
[28 – Happy Together, Wong Karwai, HK 1997: Lai and Ho practicing dance steps]
Not so in Happy Together: one may be tempted to compare Wong Karwai’s choice of red hues in these displays of mutual love between Lai and Ho with a scene in the movie Racing With the Moon (USA, 1984, starring Jean Penn and Elizabeth McGovern), in which the two young, innocent lovers bid farewell to each other in front of a red train carriage. The red of the carriage is on the light and desaturated side, reminiscent of a pale budding rose. The literary and inobtrusive epitome of young innocent love:
[29 – Racing With the Moon, Richard Benjamin, USA 1984: a less saturated, young rose petal-like red hue as a background for the couple’s moment of intimacy]
There is a similar feel of pure and simple innocence in Happy Together’s famous tango scene to the gentle, almost disappearing red-brown patterns on Ho’s shirt. The scene serves as touching testimony to the lovers’ attempt at resuscitating bygone “happy together” days, arguably one of the most poignant dance scenes in cinematic history:
[30 – Happy Together, Wong Karwai, HK 1997: Lai and Ho performing Tango steps in the kitchen]
This is yet another example as to how Wong Karwai never caters to color associations that overuse has rendered clichéd and thus devoid of meaning. Instead, Wong lets color, hue and luminance variations live in strict service to the story and its emotional experience.
As a result, the story’s impact on the audience is much more profound: imagine a conspicuous, deeply saturated red shirt on Ho in this scene – it would have (sub)consciously caused a jarring recall of the tension in earlier bedroom scenes and thus utterly failed to communicate the men’s deep and genuine love for each other.
[31 – Happy Together, Wong Karwai, HK 1997: Lai and Ho kissing passionately]
In many ways, Happy Together is poetry in motion that succeeds in transporting the protagonists’ emotions, their regrets and aspirations, their joys and anxieties directly into the hearts and minds of the audience, via the film’s overall narrative construct, the acting, the cinematography and indeed the careful, sensitive deployment of color.
Cyan and Blue Variations in Happy Together – A World without Perspective
The color scheme of the ‘outside world’ in Happy Together is confined to variations of cyan and blue, in both daylight and night scenes.
[32 – Happy Together, Wong Karwai, HK 1997: dusk and dawn outdoor scenes]
A pervasive sense of frustration and melancholy runs through these settings and into the audiences’ emotional reactions. The images appear foggy, wet and heavy with dark shadows, and in general with little room for a bright and hopeful future.
This stands in stark contrast with our protagonists’ struggle to create a shared happy future – and in many ways a metaphor for Hongkong, as this film was released months before the British colony’s 1997 handover to China.
The future feels indistinct, the atmosphere sapped of any drive to move forward. Where are the protagonists and their relationship headed?
When the men or one of them venture outside, for specific objectives or to just aimlessly wander around in a few cinema-verité-style scenes that appear to tease a new potential story development but then fail to elaborate further, de-saturated cyan hues with tints of gray and blue dominate the image.
[33 – Happy Together, Wong Karwai, HK 1997: daylight outdoor scenes]
In the film’s indoor apartment scenes, filled with conflict and tension, love and affection, similar cyan/green variations define the overall story world and background. On a narrative level, however, they tend to be punctured with strong human dynamics and emotions as Lai and Ho continue their attempt to restore their love and the idea of a viable future. On a visual dimension, specifically deployed colors, such as variations of red as described above, infuse their shared indoor scenes with a sense of drive and liveliness.
In “external world”scenes, in contrast, any constructively disruptive or even direction-pointing color cues are missing. Our protagonists are physically and emotionally trapped in their tension-fraught relationship, there seems no viable pathway into another life anywhere outside their current confined, stuck world.
Clearly, happiness beyond ‘together’ seems elusive, emotionally as much as visually.
[34 – Happy Together, Wong Karwai, HK 1997: Lai’s workplace scenes]
The same applies to Lai’s coolly-colored workplace settings where he briefly falls in love with another guy. Those feelings, however, eventually fail to dispel the overall sense of gloom, frustration and emptiness in his life, driving him back into the arms of (and continued conflict with) Ho. There is no escape.
LEARNINGS & IMPLICATIONS FOR FILM COLORISTS
Rule #1: Story rules.
Rule #2: A story’s emotions rule. The characters' emotions and, equally importantly, the emotional responses the story is designed to elicit in the audience.
No further rules apply, really. Everything in a film must work in service to the story and its intended emotional impact, otherwise the story falls flat and the movie is quickly forgotten.
A skilled colorist, working with the director and cinematographer, treats colors and hues, contrast, luminance, saturation and all the other elements at her or his manipulative disposal as “supportive” but critical and influential characters. Characters that appear on stage with the actors and which become visible to the audience, in tacit but highly impactful interaction with all the people and objects that populate the story’s world. They possess an impactful but flexible nature, a sensitive and attentive ability to blend smoothly or stand in starkly opposing contrast to each other.
Any chosen color, its hue range, contrast and luminance, unfolds its full impact in combination with other colors that either serve as an important contextual backdrop or as a complementary or even competing player in any given scene.
Another dimension is narrative context. Everything in life depends on context, without context nothing lives or thrives. People are inevitably shaped by context, so are stories, scenes, words and the tiniest behavioral slivers. Visual and narrative context support each other: colors are defined by and, in turn, actively define the narrative context they reside in; colors align with, shape and amplify the story’s emotional impact.
A colorist who fails to understand this, who blindly traps him/herself in a cognitive “whatever looks good” cage will likely not get very far.
As we observed in Fallen Angels, for instance, grading footage with a keen eye to overt or subtle, visceral emotional impact makes a difference as to how a good colorist thinks and feels about colors/hues, contrast and luminance and other associated elements – and always within the given narrative context. It is a thought process that also applies to the juxtaposition of and interplay with other colors and hues in the same image and scene.
[35&36 – original image source: artgrid.com / graded by the author, with a focus on red and orange elements and their respective emotional impact, loosely but not strictly based on observed red/orange hue and background color or saturation changes in 'Fallen Angels' – note that story context always plays the key interpretive role, guiding audiences’ immersion and subjective but decisive interpretation of those presented colors.]
While the above examples are presented out of a specific narrative and thematic context that defines a film’s foundational color palette, for the purpose of this essay tangible color and contrast changes in these images create different feelings, interpretations and thus command a different intangible emotional impact, without question.
In conclusion, color grading choices regarding specific hues as well as corresponding dimensions of contrast and luminance, command highest narrative and emotional impact when the following parameters are taken into consideration:
1. As colorists, we must understand color strategies designed to support the story arc to bring to life overall narrative and visual themes as well as their individual scenes, images and manifestations.
2. Within the story context, we should never confine ourselves to conventional color associations (e.g. a specific red hue for romance, etc), but “see” each color within the context of story, scene and the emotional response that we aim to elicit from the audience.
Otherwise, our work will not be able to escape those worn-out clichés and stereotypes that, unfortunately, populate so many otherwise well-told stories in cinema. Nor will we be able to create a “fresh” look and spin on a story that has, without fail, been told a million times already in the history of mankind.
3. As colorists, we must understand how complementary color values, blending effects and/or divergence of related elements in any given scene may command significantly different impacts on the audience’s perceptions and emotional responses – and we should be brave enough to explore and experiment with all those elements.
As we have observed in Wong Karwai’s examples, colors are powerful. The can love, they can kill, they actively unite and ruthlessly divide.
And above all, and notwithstanding specific colors’ previously ‘established’ cultural, social, religious or political histories: as storytelling agents, colors are free.
Let’s tape this to our grading suite screens: “Colors are free.”
They do not need or want to be categorized by strictly delineated emotional meanings or functional values.
It’s the story, the director, the cinematographer, the colorist who define and bring to life a color’s specific and often flexible roles, in all its applicable variations.
A film colorist who keeps this in mind will be able to dance with colors. And the audience’s emotions.
Because that’s the experience they came for.
All Images sourced via Shotdeck.com (subscription), unless otherwise indicated.
This 4-part Essay formed author Holger E. Metzger’s Thesis for Dado Valentic’s Color Grading Master Program, the world's leading professional film color grading program.
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