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aknsl22 · 9 days ago

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jaw dropped

Happy Friday the 13th!

[Alt versions & more under the cut]

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aknsl22 · 10 days ago

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Olives are Green... The Use of Colour in Little Miss Sunshine (mild spoilers)

Happy New Year everybody! Or NYE, I suppose. I’m celebrating by making pot roast, drinking red wine and watching Little Miss Sunshine again. I admittedly only read Nietzsche because of this film, and its got a very special place in my heart.

This movie is kind of like a sadder version of RV with Robin Williams - family who hates each other goes on a road trip because it’s their only option to get somewhere, and in the process learns to love one another again. The story really revolves around how adults internalize fear of failure and toxic shame; the parents are deeply angry people because of their own shortcomings, Grandpa spends most of the movie reminiscing on what he didn’t do in his youth, and uncle Frank (Steve Carrell) is probably the most obvious manifestation of all of this - when we meet the characters, he’s getting out of the hospital for a suicide attempt after watching someone he loved fall in love with someone else, and seeing his career go down the drain.

I am not here to give you a plot rundown, though. If you’ve read anything else I’ve posted, I am often specifically focused on set design and the colours utilized by directors to drive home themes. So why is Little Miss Sunshine’s use of colour so important to this film?

Well first, the colour palette overwhelmingly utilizes yellow. Makes sense, considering the title. The VW van they drive is yellow, their house interior is yellow toned - everything kind of takes on this yellow hue. If you have even a basic understanding of how colour is used in media, you’ll know that this doesn’t make a whole lot of sene. Yellow is the colour of joy, and these people… they are not joyous. So why is it used?

I have an answer. Olive, the star of the show, wears almost entirely red. Among a group of people who wear light coloured clothing that draws little attention, she is bright and loud and in line with the rest of the colour palette of the film. I believe the effort to use the palettes that the director does is to make the rest of the family conform to her colour scheme, instead of the other way around. In a sea of adults who are wrapped up in their own failures, she has no concept of not doing things just because she wants to (unless of course they’re trying to instill their shame in her). To the point that I put in my title - olives are green! Green and red are directly across from one another on the colour wheel. Olive is nothing that people tell her to be. Instead she is authentically herself, regardless of how much that forces her to go against the grain.

Dwayne, her brother, exists somewhere in between she and the adults, both in terms of colour palette and character arc. Specifically, his outfits tend to mirror that of either Frank or of Olive. Frank, because of their similar outlooks and character arcs - Dwayne has taken a vow of silence clearly not because of his desire not to talk, but because he exists in a loud, conflictual world. Frank took similar, although more dramatic, measures. Olive, on the other hand, is the person who Dwayne has the strongest relationship with. When Dwayne needs everyone to shut up, Olive is the only person who knows to be silent. When Olive is questioning whether or not to embrace toxic shame, Dwayne is the first to cast it aside for himself. I also don’t think its just a fun added detail that he’s colourblind - I think it speaks to how they’re the only people in the film to really see one another for who they are.

Her parents and uncle all come around to this eventually, and turn their own worlds yellow. They start to mirror her outfits, and all start wearing more pink and red. They relinquish themselves to the fear of judgement, the sting of shame, and after spending the entire film telling Olive what she should be doing, finally take a lesson from her.

Overall I think this film is a really sweet take on how adulthood warps your brain to worry about things that maybe don’t matter. It’s a bit of a bittersweet film, but it tells us that that’s life - you make the best of it. I could talk about this film forever, but that’s the basic distillation of my thoughts.

Also, side note, this is not the only film Steve Carrell and Alan Arkin (the Grandpa) have been in together. If you have a free evening and need a comedy to watch, I highly recommend Get Smart (2008).

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aknsl22 · 10 days ago

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