Christopher Nolan - one of the most ambitious and intriguing directors of this generation. Before diving into the Nolanverse, if I can describe Nolan's mastery of using bleak and dark colors it would be " If Quentin Tarantino portrays violence with pink color, Nolan portrays love with black color". Primarily his use of bleak colors is due to his red-green color blindness, but Hey.... thanks to that we have got incredible and innovative symbolism and color tones.
With that in mind let's delve into the dark and amusing world of Christopher Nolan.
The Beginning :
We all may know and will remember Nolan as this crazy director who has a kink for non-linear storytelling and exploring concepts that cannot be explored in real life. Prestige doesn't have both of those, instead, Prestige was a steampunk film that just burst into sci-fi when no one saw it coming.
In this film, initially, the film was kind of bright with a 1960s Victorian vibe, but as the movie progresses the colors transition from a yellow-white theme to a blue-black picture. This blue-black color was used to convey the darkness unfolding.
Initial and Final Colours of The Prestige
As we can see above, the yellowish colors in the film convey a sense of lethargicness and curiosity to make the audience think - "Oooh magic this should be fun!", but then the blue color is to make the audience think - "Dude... this ain't magic". Maybe this is where Nolan just thought he can manipulate dark and bleak colors to his way of non-linear storytelling.
The Darkest way to tell a lighthearted-dark story :
Now the trilogy of Darkness (quite literally), everyone's favorite Dark Knight Trilogy. This set of movies was where I believe dark colors actually meant something in a movie other than poverty or knowledge.
Opening sequences of The Dark Knight Trilogy
These three pictures above resemble the lifecycle of a bat. The first movie "Batman Begins", has an orangish scheme symbolizing dusk i.e sunset which is when a bat is the most active representing the beginning of the trilogy. The movie also follows the same color scheme in a very subtle way. The second movie had a blue-black scheme which represents the 'middle of the night' with a ray of moonlight. Finally, the third and final movie had a pitch-black color scheme with some sprinkle of white, this symbolizes the night sky without moonlight and ready for dawn, this is the time when the bat goes to sleep, meaning the end of the trilogy. Although I have only used the opening sequence, the complete film is dependant on this theme, especially the crucial scenes i.e when Joker's first appearance, Bane's hideout, etc.
War & Betrayal in blue:
Dunkirk was critically acclaimed and was the 'Nolan War Film' because who would think "Imma' make this film with an emotional weight with a crazy time-flow". Back to the colors, blue colors were formerly used to invoke creativity, passion, and so on. Although one could argue directors use any color according to their ideas, the blue and orange theme never (according to me) gave us an ominous presence lurking in the form of fighter planes pre-dunkirk.
A space odyssey that used black to symbolize hope:
My personal favorite from Nolan-Interstellar. The majestic space adventure takes you beyond comprehension and unfolds into something simple.
If you look closely at both of these pictures, they both have similar dark tones but the first one has an earthy-green kind of texture but on the second picture, it has a black-purple tone. The first picture is a scene during the opening where hope for surviving on earth is close to zero, the second picture is a scene when the main character gets a chance to travel to outer space and find a planet for human migration. The first picture and its associated scene carry a weight of hopelessness, whereas the second picture and its associated scene have a sense of hope. These two pictures are why Nolan manipulates dark color schemes so well, that he can convey opposite feelings with similar color tones.
Conclusion:
For the references and scenes mentioned above, I have tried my best to detail colors and their very closest meanings. So based on my observations, although color blind
I believe Christopher Nolan has opened our eyes to another side of the move color spectrum.
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