Color as a Narrator

In Pedro Almodóvar’s film Todo Sobre Mi Madre(All About My Mother) the use of color is employed greatly throughout the film. For the audience, sight is a very important, because it is one more medium through which the narrative is transmitted. Color, or lack thereof, is a vital part of this visual means through which the story is told to the audience. Almodóvar takes advantage of it in the telling of this narrative because it influences the emotions and senses of the audience. In fact, color is so dramatically used in some situations that the stories of these women are seemingly narrated by its use, as if it had a role of its own in the film.

The use of color is an artistic technique that persists throughout the entirety of the film. This allows the audience to really take note of its vibrant qualities in some moments and its muted nature in others. This application enables the audience to build a relationship with the use of color the way they would be able to do with another character in the film. Color acts as a visual stimulant for the audience, and the director plays with this in extremes in the film. The scenes tend to be either extremely colorful and lively or dull and monochromatic. For example, the scenes in Madrid are expressed by a lack of the vibrant colors that are often utilized in other scenes of the movie, which is not to say that color is not utilized in certain scenes and they come out as black and white, but rather that the color comes out muted and dark. The character of the narration becomes gloomier at this point in the film. This is representative since her son’s accident happens in Madrid. After she moves to Barcelona and begins to pick up and put back together the pieces of her life, the scenes burst with brilliant colors. At this point, the nature of the narration that color supplies is much more lively. These lively colors deliver a big impact on the audience, because they are such a visual stimulant, but also because they come to represent Manuela and the other women working through their hardships to continue with life.

The use of color in the extremes captures the attention of viewers making them note its importance to the telling of the narrative. It is the relationship the audience can build with the use of color because of its persistence throughout the film’s entirety and the way in which it highlights the significance of certain themes in the lives of the women in order to help communicate their stories that personify color for the viewers. Color takes on a role of its own in the film, similar to that of a narrator, because it is always there to help express the story.