Twenty-two minutes into Alex Lehmann’s 2016 romantic drama film Blue Jay, Jim Henderson (Mark Duplass) and his former high school girlfriend Amanda (Sarah Paulson) sit by the lakeside, catching up on each other’s lives. The conversation is soaked in nostalgia and playfulness. Jim has been brought back from the wilderness because of his mother’s death, and Amanda has taken a breather from her picture-perfect life on account of her sister’s pregnancy. Melancholy grins and tender glances are exchanged between the deflected lovers while they gorge on some jelly beans. This brief conversation gives away a very strong spirit of longing, enough to make the viewer breathe a sigh of ‘what if’. Accentuating this pipe dream is the black-and-white tone of the film. 

In the Age of Color

The experiments with color in cinema began as early as the beginning of the twentieth century but it was only in 1939, with the release of The Wizard of Oz, that the magic color could do in filmmaking finally came to notice. The American musical fantasy film used the Technicolor process and eventually became a pioneer, thus paving a way for color in cinema to thrive. However, despite technological progress, black-and-white cinematography never really went away. 

From Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (2021) to Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon (2021), the black-and-white mode has been a common choice among filmmakers for interesting reasons that tell us plenty about the art of filmmaking. Aesthetics, appeal, mood, and sometimes plot requirements—black-and-white can tell a story in a way color could never.

Monochrome brings with it a sense of intimacy that only highlights the emotions explored. No wonder filmmakers have used this while telling stories of romance of different degrees. 

In the Pursuit of Establishing Intimacy

In the case of Blue Jay, the black and white tone helps with and sets the nostalgic, melancholy mood throughout. In an interview with BUILD, Sarah Paulson and Mark Duplass talked about the choice of cinematography and said, “There are two people, two colors.” The film thus attempts to draw focus on the two, with limited distraction. We see intricately crafted shots that play around with light and add to the indie vibe the film tries to foster. “We decided early on in prep to shoot in black and white… The result is a very simple film focusing on the characters and the spaces we create for them,” Lehmann has said in an interview with Filmmaker. 

While the black-and-white plays an important role in establishing Blue Jay’s emotional crescendo, it plays a contrasting role in another romance drama—Malcolm and Marie (2021). The Sam Levinson directorial exposes us to two conflicted lovers—a Hollywood filmmaker who has tasted some new-found glory (John David Washington) and his girlfriend (Zendaya). Like Blue Jay, Malcolm and Marie focuses on two characters; however, while Blue Jay maneuvers through ‘what ifs,’ Malcolm and Marie is a modern tale of love that doesn’t shy away from asking some uncomfortable questions about love.

The film navigates through a lot of ‘gray’, and the black and white monochrome only emphasizes that and also helps heighten the tension built in the film. The makers also attempted to pay an ode to Black actors. In an interview with All Things, Zendaya explained that the film attempts to “reclaim” the beauty of the Hollywood era for Black actors. “Other than the fact that it’s just pretty, it’s beautiful, it adds a timelessness to it, but also… there was a thought also about reclaiming the narrative of black and white Hollywood and Black actors really having their moment at that time. We weren’t as present in the black-and-white era. A lot of filmmakers have already done this before, a lot of Black filmmakers, so it’s not necessarily a new idea, but we did want to pay tribute to that era and reclaim that beauty and that elegance with these two Black actors,” the actor had said. 

To Recreate and Emphasise

Another romantic drama filmed in black and white is Cold War (2018). Unlike the aforementioned two, Cold War is a tale of love and oppression that chronicles the story of Zula (Joanna Kulig) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), over a period of 15 years. The decision to stick to the black and white color tone, similar to the approach director Paweł Pawlikowski followed in another film, Ida (2013), was used to establish the essence of memory and mood. “It wasn’t like the United States where we had beautiful colors. You come here, and everything was gray and bleached,” shared Pawlikowski in an interview with LA Times. The same is the case with Steven Spielberg’s modern classic Schindler’s List (1994) which used black-and-white to recreate the era the film showcased, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma (2018) which helped accentuate the dreary setting of the film. 

It is commendable how the monochrome choice can help add a layered meaning to the narrative, recreate a certain era in history, or accentuate the film’s look. It is no doubt that this cinematic tool of filmmaking is here to stay.

Article Courtesy of Anjani Chadha