The Color Purple Monologue Analysis

A slow fade from black to colour reveals Brian Wilson in his bed, panning in and over the camera breaks room the blinding white light in the corner to focus on the lit but shadow engulfed character. Surrounded by grays, blues and beiges it looks like the making of a prozac commercial. Blue is a colour that is seen as calmness and as the relationship with Melinda progresses the two share an assortments of blues and white, the change in colour shows his regression back to a previous state without the light she offered. Jump to a close up of him in his bed, his eyes wander with half his face covered in light shadows, the slow falloff intensifying as the scene progresses. The camera follows the index vectors created by his eyes upward before

An example of low key lighting with fast fall off the room is lit by a blue tingey light, overshadowed by a bright white light creaking from a door, like that of the bright light in his room. As the scene continues a series of shots of him in the bed interchange between different phases of his life. Shots of Melida become more saturated and are matched on action by movement reflected in his hands as she talks to a adolescent Brian and he is transformed into a young adult. Calming waves are reflected gently on his ceiling before flashes of on stage performances and recording, easily distinguishable by a dusty filter and yellow tint. In all the images it is clear that Brian is uncomfortable, mirrored by his lost facial expressions distant look. The next two images of Brian’s father and Dr. Landy followed by a close up where Brian looks only slightly responsive is juxtaposed with a highly saturated longshot of him in his home where he first began using opioids to cope with his father, whose role would be taken over Dr.

Landy. Before cutting to an all white long shot of Brian in an all white room in a white robe a shot of the pool clearly reflected onto a ceiling reflects a feeling of drowning, symbolically leading him to a heaven like place of peace. The longshot moves to the front of the bed where different eras of Brian looks upon each other like a child at the footsteps of a parent’s bed when they’re scared. The scene ends with Brian back in his original bed but this time he is sitting up, an action not likely due to the battle within. The constant uses of medium shots to long shots really help to show a fuller picture of reflection and he takes in the full picture before making his decision to give life a try one last