A Zed and Two Noughts
Peter Greenaway, 1985
Trained as a painter, Peter Greenaway, director of A Zed and Two Noughts has a professional background and experience in using certain color combinations in order to draw a full attention of his film’s viewers and portray the realities in his own way. The two colors of RED and WHITE are evidently applied in this film either separately or alongside each other to highlight the idea of the movie. The color white generally symbolizes peace, purity, truth, innocence, neutrality and life. In contrast red is standing for war, impurity, guilt, passion and death.
The first brilliant use of red and white is in Alba’s clothing. We see that Alba is dressed in white all throughout the film expect of two scenes. At the beginning, when the twin brothers - whose wife’s’ had been killed in a car accident which was driven by Alba - are trying to condemn Alba for their death. But Alba who has lost one leg in that accident is not guilty. She is wearing a white dress as well which is a symbol of purity and accentuate her innocence. We always see her in white clothing until a point that she has been moved to her new apartment and that’s when she is trying to seduce the twin brother that both of them go to bed with her. In this scene she is wearing a red dress. Here the color choice is manipulating our image of Alba which was seen as an innocent victim of a misfortunate event but suddenly is loaded with temptations. At the end when she is lying in bed and waiting for death, again she is dressed in white. She is returned to purity and is ready for peace.
The considerable contrast between red and white with distinction symbolic meaning of these two colors notably is used as a narrative during the film. There is a scene when Alba is laid in the bed, and Oswald tosses a vase which carries red flowers into her. The color of red is chosen to show Oswald’s anger and rage towards Alba which is in white dress in bed which shows her innocence in the car accident.
The other use of the dominant contrast between red and white is the red in Venus de Milo’s dress and hat. Venus is acting as a symbol of both temptation and energy. She appears by Alba’s bed to sooth her from pain, she starts to have relationships with both brothers and also she is the one who appears in the scene of seducing Alba to wear clothing according to one of the Vermeer's painting. In the bathroom scene, where everywhere is purely white, Venus is standing in her red dress trying to delude one of the twins. Again the combination of red and white is used here, white as the background to highlight the character of the red.
