Visual Division in the Tulips in Silsila – Miriam Esther Goldman
In my opinion, “Silsila” had the most visually interesting shots of any film we watched this year. One of my favourite visual devices in any film we watched was the use of the red and yellow flowers as counter to each other twice in this film.
When they first appear, Amit is wearing a black polo shirt with a red collar, and Chandni is wearing a yellow sari. The song makes mention of flowers separating them, but also as lights of love. The scene was shot in the Netherlands, and thus was presumably somewhat expensive to film on location.
The colours appear briefly a little later in the film, when their love affair is slightly more established. This time, he wears yellow with a little bit of red, and she wears red with a little bit of yellow.
Near the end of the film they return to a space of yellow and red flowers. This time, Amit wears the same black polo shirt he had on before “Dekha Ek Khwab.”
It’s clear that the dramatic significance of these two colours is tied up in the personalities and moral places of these two characters. The symbolism of the flowers of spring being so close to the spring song of reproduction which opens the film fit in well with the tone of new beginnings and hope which underlies this film. Their love is doomed, too, though, which may be foreshadowed by the fact that they each stay within red and yellow, occasionally switching between their respective colours, but never moving on to something different, never matching, and never considering being seen in, say, orange.
Filed by miriam78 at May 9th, 2013 under Uncategorized