color for bedrooms psychology

films can do a great job of taking us insidethe minds of characters. martin scorsese burrows into the warped psycheof robert de niro’s vigilante in taxi driver. in safe, director todd haynes asks us to seethe world through the eyes of julianne moore’s suburban housewife, who may or may not begoing crazy. and, of course, david fincher’s fight clubfractures a character’s mind so deeply that by the end we have to re-evaluate everythingwe’ve seen. in 1993, the acclaimed polish director krzysztof kieå›lowski released a film that exploresthe mental and emotional experience of a woman grieving her husband and young daughter.

it’s heavy material, but the filmmakingremains lyrical, expressive, and humane. so let’s take a closer look at krzysztofkieå›lowski’s blue. [intro music plays] [intro]blue is actually the first film in a loose trilogy. after making the decalogue, a collection often short films inspired by the ten commandments, writer-director krzysztof kieslowski decided to make a series of feature films named after the three colors of the frenchflag. he and co-writer krzysztof piesiewicz — and, yes, they’re both named krzysztof — mistakenly believed that each color representedone of the three ideals of the french revolution:

liberty, equality, and fraternity. they liked that framework so much that theystuck with it, even when they learned that the colors and the motto weren’t directlylinked. it didn’t matter much anyway, since kieslowskiwasn’t interested in making explicitly political films. he’s a deeply humanist filmmaker, and allhis films are notable for their patience, their emotional power, and their closely-observedcharacters. the stories often examine how universal themesplay out in the intimate moments and day-to-day lives of humans. and blue is kieslowski’s movie about liberty.

he chose to focus on a character who, in thewake of a tragic accident, attempts to liberate herself from all ties to her past, her owndesires, and even the world itself. juliette binoche plays julie, theprotagonist. her husband, patrice, and young daughter,anna, are killed in a car accident within the first few minutes of the film. the story then follows her attempts to goon without them. and, at first, she almost chooses not to. while recovering in the hospital from theaccident, julie tries to kill herself. she stops, but we immediately understand thedepth and power of her grief.

back in the world, she resolves to strip alltraces of her family from her life. she just wants to exist, free from all attachments— physical, emotional, and spiritual. she sells most of her possessions and putsher country estate on the market. the only thing she keeps is a mobile madefrom blue crystals that hung in her daughter’s room. she collects sheet music for an unfinishedcomposition her husband was working on, and throws it into the jaws of a garbage truck. and she moves to a nondescript apartment buildingwith no children in it and finds a bit of peace in her solitary nighttime swims in thebuilding’s pool. her isolation is almost complete.

and yet, the more she tries free herself fromthe past, the more it seems to grip her. a boy who witnessed the crash tracks her downand attempts to return a necklace he took from the accident. caught off-guard, julie appreciates the gesture,but tells him to keep it. she doesn’t want another physical reminderof her family. she’s also haunted by her husband’s unfinishedsymphony. pieces of it play over the soundtrack at emotionalmoments. and sometimes julie seems to hear it, asif it’s surging up from inside her own mind. she also discovers patrice has left behinda very tangible echo of himself.

he had been having a long-term affair, andhis mistress is pregnant with his child. as it becomes clear that julie can’t actuallyfree herself from her memories, she begins to wrestle with new ways to live in the world. reluctantly, she works to complete her husband’ssymphony with his steadfast colleague olivier, played by benoã®t rã©gent. she gives her country house to patrice’smistress, suggesting that her unborn child should have both patrice’s name and hishouse. and by the end of the film, she even seemsopen to a possible romantic relationship with olivier.

maybe. just maybe. as the complete version of patrice’s compositionplays at the end of the film, we check in with each of our major characters, endingwith a weeping julie who gives a hint of a smile. it’s one final indication that she mightbe healing, even if the hurt will never fully go away. at the core of blue is binoche’s powerful performanceas her character navigates grief. she’s in every scene and rarely speaks morethan a few lines at a time. kieå›lowski keeps the camera close to herface, tracking the emotions roiling inside

her, from despair to tenderness. and often she embodies more than one of thoseconflicting emotions at once. in the scene where she confronts patrice’smistress, binoche is somehow able to play julie’s hurt and anger, but also her curiosity,determination, and maybe even envy. she’s lost her child, and this strangeris carrying her husband’s unborn son! kieå›lowski and cinematographer slawomir idziak also flood the film with the color blue. not a huge surprise there… it’s in thetitle, after all. and one way to critique a film is to analyzemotifs that the filmmakers use again and again to try and understand some deeper meaning.

whether it’s sunlight refracted throughthe blue mobile crystals, or the wavering hues of the swimming pool, the color seemsto take on different meanings to match julie’s emotions. writing in the new review of film, authorand kieå›lowski scholar steven woodward observes that despite the american association of bluewith sorrow, the color is actually the least culturally defined of kieå›lowski’s trilogy. white commonly represents innocence, purity,and light, while red often signifies desire, heat, or anger. but blue can be soothing or sad, distant orrefreshing, scary or relaxing.

and that makes it the perfect color to illustratejulie’s shifting emotions. when she steps into anna’s empty room, wediscover its walls are all blue. overcome, julie attacks the mobile, tearingoff some of its crystals. here, blue is a prison, a stark reminder ofwhat she’s lost. elsewhere, the color seems to haunt julie. off-screen lights will inexplicably turn blue,making her look ghostly. for some shots, kieå›lowski and idziak wentso far as to wrap the entire camera in blue gels, which are those transparent filtersused in lighting. beyond color, kieå›lowski uses sound and musicin sophisticated ways to give us a sense of

julie’s experience. most of the music in the film is non-diegetic. that’s music added to the film to createmeaning or heighten emotion, but it doesn’t have a source within the world of the film. in other words, it’s music that the charactersin the film can’t actually hear. even though we, the audience, do. kieå›lowski and composer zbigniew preisner play with the line between diegetic and non-diegetic sound to great effect. when julie first retrieves the score for herhusband’s symphony, we hear pieces of the

music. and so does julie. or at least she imagines it, and we getto listen into her imagination. and when she throws the sheet music into thegarbage truck, the song distorts as the trash compactor’s teeth tear the paper. this extreme use of subjective sound putsus in julie’s experience even more fully. and the opening chords of patrice’s symphonyhaunt julie throughout the film. in one early scene, julie sits alone in achair at night, shortly after watching her family’s funeral through a little tv set.

the opening beats of the symphony blare onthe soundtrack as a bright blue light fills the room. julie looks almost directly at the camerawith a vaguely terrified expression, watching us as we dolly away from her, and then backtoward her. suddenly, julie seems aware not only of thenon-diegetic score, but also of the camera. are we inhabiting patrice’s or anna’sghost, back from the dead to spook her? or are we her grief, threatening to overwhelmher? some critics have argued that this scene actuallydepicts julie’s call to action. it’s the first indication that her salvationwill come through helping olivier finish the symphony.

by the time she finally agrees to work onthe composition at the end of the film, we can even think of the symphony as a metaphorfor julie herself. just like her, it’s a bit of a mess. and only by bringing it to life is julie ableto find some measure of peace. when she first starts working on the composition,kieå›lowski gives us a close-up of the notes on the page. as julie’s finger moves along them, we hearthe music indicated by the notes. then she starts suggesting changes and we hear thenew musical arrangement. it’s a remarkable moment that plays beautifullywith this gap between diegetic and non-diegetic

sound, as we hear the score that julie imagines. not only that, we hear it getting betterat the same time that julie herself is getting better. georgina evans, a film scholar at the universityof cambridge, has a unique reading of blue that explores the film’s intense identificationwith julie’s subjective experience. evans suggests that maybe julie experiencessynesthesia, a “neural condition in which a stimulus to one sense produces a responsein one or more others.” in other words, maybe julie sees music andhears color. so when the symphony plays over emotionalmoments, or when a new shade of blue washes over her face, perhaps that’s how julieprocesses the world around her.

this interpretation may also give new meaningto one of the most interesting shots near the end of the film. when julie finally gives in and helps oliviercomplete the symphony, the sequence ends with a wide shot of them that goes out of focus,and then stays that way for a long time. we hear julie and olivier, but we only seethem as fuzzy shapes deep within the frame. it’s as if julie needs enter some sort ofblurry mental state and let her senses fully merge in order to create. finally, it’s worth noting that this filmlinks julie to the music in a very literal way. music doesn’t really exist with only onenote.

as a karaoke singing demon once said... lorne: it's like a song. now, i can hold a note for a long time. lorne: actually, i can hold a note forever. lorne: but, eventually, that's just noise. it's the change we're listening for. lorne: the note coming after and the one after that. that's what makes it music. and the same is true here. julie suffers, as a single person — or note— in isolation. but as she collaborates on the symphony andconnects with more people, more notes and more variations of those notes appear.

the score grows right along with julie. so blue could be about isolation as a copingmechanism for grief, the ability of music to save us, or even a woman whose senses arescrambled. anchored by one of the great performancesof the end of the 20th century, this film uses camera, lighting, and sound to tell adifficult story with compassion and resonance. next time, we’ll trade paris for mongoliato witness a real teenage girl’s attempt to master an ancient tradition and bear thetitle eagle huntress. crash course film production is produced inassociation with pbs digital studios. you can head over to their channel to checkout a playlist of their latest amazing shows, like

origin of everything, deep look, and eons. this episode of crash course was filmed inthe doctor cheryl c. kinney crash course studio with the help of these nice people and ouramazing graphics team is thought cafe.

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