Only God Forgives and the meaning behind the colors in the movie
Ok I have 63 prints and it's 2 am, but I'm not fucking sleeping until I write this down. Unfortunately, i can't use all the prints because of the limit of 30 pictures for a post. So i only used the more important ones :(
All the colors in the movie tells what is happening in the movie, they are there for a reason and im going to talk about what I think each one of them mean.
TW: MENTIONS OF INCEST AND SA
Let's start by the meaning of the colors:
Red: I think red represents violence (obviously) and trauma, especially for Julian. Every scene we see him with red around it, his traumas are brought to light.
Yellow: yellow is normally associated with light, and I think the movie uses that to represent the truth/justice. The moment someone is telling the truth about something or doing "justice" (it's in quotation marks because some characters think what they are doing is justice, but it's not). Also could be mean the hope Julian feels, the hope to be able to move on from all the trauma.
Green: for me green is used to represent the corruption, and hear me out here. Normally we see green and yellow together in the movie, creating a contrast between them, so the green would be here to show the distortion of yellow. Showing that the justice/truth is being brought up in a distorted way, telling that the methods used to bring justice aren't right either. I will explain that more through out the essay.
Blue: well blue is here to do represent sadness and melancholy, and Julian is wearing blue alot of times in the movie. But something i noticed is that in a low beam blue looks like black.
Black: the black means the sense of autonomy. In society people in authority roles uses black to bring them a sense of seriousness, so what I felt is that black is the understanding of authority someone have over themselves, the feeling of identity. It also could mean the darkness of some characters.
White: white is the emptiness, the neutral opinion or the feeling of no regret.
Starting with the first shot of the movie, we see Julian surrounded by red, yellow and black. He steps out of the dark and slowly walks to one of the boxers, being completely in the red light.
Here is the first moment he walks out of the black, the autonomy. This basically resumes his whole character, leaving his autonomy behind to get into his traumas, feeling like he would never get out of this spiral of pain.
Another thing is that his face being half in the dark, showing that even though he has some dark in him, he also has light, and some kind of hope to be free.
Jumping some minutes further we see this moment here. Julian is looking at his brother Billy after the match, with Billy saying that the boxer is a good fighter.
Billy is completely in the dark and we can only see his mouth and his clothes. His mouth being in the yellow light shows that he is telling the truth, but also the red he wears show us the violence he has inside of him.
I noticed that the movie makes some parallels between Julian and Billy. When Billy is mostly covered by the dark, Julian is facing the opposite direction of the yellow light. But he stays in light either way, we still can see his face and his eyes. So we can see his intentions, what he has inside of him, but we can't see Billy's face. We don't know what he is felling and don't know his intentions.
Now we can see Billy's eyes, we know what he is feeling now. But he still stay in the dark, and his eyes look black here, meaning that he has that darkness inside of him. Translating the subtitles, he is saying "time to meet the devil", and right after that he rape and kills a 16 years old. That phrase being a foreshadowing for his death (because we all know that guy deserve to go to hell).
Julian is looking at his hands, the yellow ligth at his face and hands being his wish to be free. The statue behind him casted in red is creating a parallel between them. He wants to be free from the trauma and also have the courage to figth for his autonomy.
Here we see them walking opposite directions, telling us that the path and choices they took are different. Billy is walking in a dark alley, having a beam yellow light in it, now we know how Billy actually is. The red shirt is taking all the attention of the scene, showing that Billy is violent inside of him. Julian however, has red all over him, but not inside of him, the violence is all around him, but he is not violent inside.
Also, we can't see Billy's face here too, completely in the dark. But Julian has his face in light, another diferente between them.
Chang is questioning how he could allow this situation to happen. The green at his face showing his disgust for what happened.
Also, when the green and yellow are tougher it shows the justice distorted. He would bring justice for the mans daughter by allowing him to kill Billy, it's not the conventional way of justice, but it's justice either way. The faint red showing that the violence still have control of the situation.
When i saw this scene, i automatically thought about hypersexuality and the fact that Julian feels like he dosen't have controll over his body. He is tied up on the chair while he watches Mai, the room completly red telling that he is reliving his trauma, but he has control over it now. He gave his consent to Mai so she could tie him, he is tring to seek control over his trauma.
Now here is the firts time Julian tries to reach for his autonomy, he slowly walks to the pich black. He reaches for the hand inside of the room, but his hands are cut off, like he got punished for tring to be in control.
I think this moment show us that he tried to confront his mother one time, he tried to have control over himself and stop har abuse, but then he got severly punish for that.
At the hotel we see a hallway with yellow lights, a foreshadowing of the end of the movie. The justice would go after Crystal, make her pay for what she had done.
The other shot of her at the hotel room is a reflection of Crystal. She has nothing but darknes in her, we can only see her silhouette walking towards the white window. The white could be her emptiness, the fact that she don't feel any kind of regret for what she did.
I think this is my favorite scene. Julian is cleaning his hands with blue all over him. He looks at the mirror and the water turns into blood, then he looks outise and see the red hallway.
This moment could be Julian attempts to feel less dirty and disgusted. Cleaning his hands to make the trauma go away, but it dosen't matters how hard he tries, the violence and the trauma would always get his hands dirty again.
He is so scared now, he scared of getting hurt again. Julian can't take control of himself because he is so scared of the pain that he runs away from freedom, even though it is something he wants so much.
(this is gore of my comfort character)
The position Crystal is, the way he looks scared of her and his face being at the light like always. He can't move, he stays there afraid of what she would do to him, just like when he was infront of the black room.
Julian is so scared of Crystal that he is paralyzed, a common reaction from SA victims. His trauma is all over him again, lliterally. Touching him inappropriately, showing that she stills has power over him after all those years.
The other shot is Crystal standing in front of a lamp with Yellow light. She is ignoring the truth about Billy, something that she does a lot in the movie.
When i talk about the twisted justice by the combination of green and yellow, Crystal is the best character to exemplify that. She thinks that every one involved in Billy's death should die, that would bring justice for her and Billy, but that's not actual justice. Billy was a terrible person just like his mom and got the outcome of his actions, he deserved what happend to him.
(another gore of my comfort character)
At this shot we think Julian is wering a black suit, just like Crystal and Mai. Both of them have control over who they are, when Julian shouts to Mai to take her dress off, she still has black underwer. Even when he wants to give it the humiliation back, she stills has her autonomy.
But Julian is diferent, at the white light we can see that his suit is actually blue. He pretends to have his autonomy to look stronger maybe, he doesn't want to show vulnerability infront of Crystal and Mai.
Then we have this moment, Crystal at the seme place as Julian at the start of the movie and julian at billy's place. Again Crystal infront of the yellow, ignoring all the truth about her and asking Julian to yet again do something violent for her.
The diference is that Julian is not in the dark like Billy, he still has hope and light inside of him, and now is covering all his body. He can't take Crystal abuse anymore and soon he will be free from her, soon the justice will find her.
The yellow light telling Julian that justices was made. Red is not the main color anymore, the abuse cicle has ended, now the main color is black. Julian is finally starting to have his autonomy back.
Here Julian finaly get free from Crystal, Chang brought justice to her and now she lost all the power she had over him. When he cuts her open to touch her womb felt like it was like a Cesarean section. The act of opening her up would be Julian cutting the connection they had, as if he were cutting an umbilical cord. Crystal is no longer connected to him and now he is free from her abuse.
The last scene is Julian extending his hand to Chang, ready to get cut by his sword. Here i see Julian not being afraid of the pain of the autonomy anymore, he is still scared, but now he has enough courage to face it. It also could be Chang setting him free to move on, cutting his hands off as a mathaphor for him braking the cuffs that Crystal put on Julian.
Ok that all. I really wish i could use all my prints, because i have a lot more to say about the colors in the movie. But i wanted to focus more on Julian than the other characters. Julian is such a good character i loved him. Can someone please pay for his therapy???????
Like imagine Driver is a valet at Seb’s and that’s how they meet, Driver has to like take Sebastian home all the time when he gets way too drunk. Then they just like form a bond and hijinks ensue from there
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