Memories of Matsuko and Starry Starry Night

Colour and lighting are used to depict the narrative of a film in spite of other elements of film style. Colour attracts attention and creates ambience of a film affecting the perception of the audiences (Boggs & Petrie, 2004, p. 204). In the meantime, lighting, which is essential to make a film, helps to create different meanings presented by one scene. Memories of Matsuko (Tetsuya Nakashima, 2006) uses a rich colour palette and different features of lighting throughout the whole movie to portray different stages of Matsuko’s life. A particular scene is chosen to study on the fantasy diegesis created. It is a scene after Matsuko becomes the mistress of Okano, and tracks him back to his house. She is satisfied after meeting Okano’s wife, imagining that Okano will divorce with his wife for her sake. Another film selected to make a comparison is a Taiwanese-Chinese film Starry Starry Night (Tom Shu-Yu Lin, 2011), based on an illustrated book by Jimmy Liao. The scene chosen from this film happens when Mei and Jay are on the train going to Mei’s grandfather’s shack on the outskirts of the city to watch the splendid starry night. Both of the scenes form a fantasy diegesis as a depiction of desire, innocence, happiness and pursuit of dream. They reflect the imagination of the characters. However the colour effects and lighting used are different in these two scenes.
Throughout the chosen scene in Memories of Matsuko, an extremely rich colour palette is applied. From the flowers planted in front of Okano’s house, to the imagined flowers and birds along the road and finally the pathway leading to ‘the moon’, a warm colour palette is used in major. It is defined as a surrealistic use of colour as this scene has “an oddly dreamlike or unre...

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... music is played as a hypnotising music into the silence and beauty of the night. Similarly, these two scenes use the same style of cinematography in filming the unreality. Long shots and extreme long shots are commonly used allowing the audiences to get a big picture of the fantasy and get indulged in the imaginary world. The simplest yet appropriate costumes and make-up are applied to reflect the pure intentions insisted by the characters and their genuine expressions in their fantasy. Both of the films selected have different or similar filming techniques in depicting the characters’ fantasy world, but they consist of the same meaning of creating the fantasy diegesis: that is the portrayal of desire, happiness, innocence and pursuit of dream.

Works Cited

Boggs, J. M., Petrie, D. W. (2004). The Art of Watching Films (6 ͭ ͪ ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.