Can You Find Mom?

            The movie Alien was not your typical movie with highlighted objects and people, instead the visuals were dulled and darkened to the point that I couldn't find anything that was supposed to catch my eye.  Later as the movie finished, I realized that was the exact point. The lack of color and vibrancy forced the viewer to be confused as to what he or she was looking at. One could notice that at the beginning, before the monster had been born out of Kane's stomach, the lighting, especially at their final meal, was bright and everything was well visible.  The entire white room resonated the florescent lights so you were able to see the alien in full lighting. From that point on, the monster became one with the background, blending into everything corner and nook.  The execution of putting everything in a darker light forced the viewer to imagine every crate, corner, or pipe to be the alien.  Rather than adding importance with color, they added a thematic element of surprise and danger by taking away all light and details possible.  The movie never again returns to full brightness but the alien is finally revealed when Ripley shoots it and flings it out into space.  We are able to see it's full size but never his full color or shape due to all the shadows and dark on lighting.  The viewer is able to create his or her own image of what the details of the alien truly look like.  This allows them to form a personalized version of the alien that is different from viewer to viewer.
            Aside from the lighting, movie had a notion of constant birthing and rebirthing throughout the movie.  The movie begins with all of the characters, beginning and focusing on Kane, emerging out of an egg shaped cocoon that held them and protected them on their long journey to this new planet. In this instance the ship it's their mother is ironically called "Mother" and she carries  all the knowledge about the mission and how the mission will enfold.  (Unfortunately she is a bad mother and gets all of her kids killed, but that's not her fault exactly.) We then see this phenomenon happening again on the crashed ship that Ash has discovered.  There are eggs located in the crashed ship and one happens to leech itself onto Kane and then reproduces inside of him.  One could say that Kane is a mother, not in a humanly biological way, by being a host for the alien to grow inside of him and then is expelled out of him.  This process looks much like a mother giving birth to a human with the use of blood, mucous and other bodily juices.  The alien dies much like a mother giving birth.   Ripley shoots the alien out of the space ship and she's it flying out into space. Only thing is that the arrow is attached to a large rope that makes the alien appear to have an umbilical cord attached to it while being expelled or "born" into space.
            Though this movie contrasted very differently from movies in the past, it offered viewers many opportunities to find similarities visually about the metaphor of a mother.

The World Seen Through Blues and Grays

In the movie Sunshine, we are given more variation in colors than we ever have in a movie.  The general colors of the movie are not just purely black and white like we say in Moon, but dulled blues and grays.  The repetitive use of colors visually describes life and importance is amazing; I will never be able to watch a film without looking for a purpose with the tone and color of the movie.  In a very similar blog to that of Moon, I will be describing the different objects and their meanings with the use of color. 

            I will begin with the warm yellow/gold we seen in many life-depending objects.  These objects include the gold solar panels that reflect the sunlight, the space suit, the sun and the replica sun in the ship.  These yellow and gold’s continue to remind us constantly of the true main focus of the Icarus, in contrast to Moon where colors were the only source of life.  The main focus is the sun, the one main thing that is keeping the people back at home alive, and with out these bright yellow objects, the mission would not be able to be completed or even needed for that matter.

The one aspect of this movie that focuses on color in respects to life was the immense greenhouse.  This type of greenhouse not only existed in the second Icarus but the first as well.  The enormity to which the first Icarus’ plants grew is only to show you the potential to which they were expecting to need this item.  The saturated and rich green color that appears on the plants describes this to a tee.  The brighter and more vibrant the color appears, the greater in importance to life it becomes.  During the movie, one would not see a computer, except for its bright but white screen, in any form or vibrant coloring due to its lack of importance to their survival. 

One scene that I found rather confusing and defeated the purpose of having color as a meaning of life was the scene in which Capa says goodbye to his family on a video chat while he is surrounded by large green moving lines and squares.  At first glance, the meaning is not apparent, but we can see this flooding of green is there to describe life just like Gurdee in Moon.  This resembles human contact, life on the other side, which happens to be Earth.  This is their little sparkle of human contact to the outside world rather than their small one that includes only the people on the ship. 

            Color is vital part to movies, when a certain color appears only on important objects, we subconsciously pick them out and notice them in a whole other light.  I enjoyed this new and updated lighting of blue and gray than the one in Moon, which was only solid black and white.  One could say that with the black and white, it is much easier for the eye to notice when color does appear and much more difficult when surrounded by dim and dull colors.