“Evil Colors: Red”: an audio-visual storytelling style for Netflix (press file)
What happens to the young woman who throws herself into the arms of the first guy she meets anywhere? It is doubtful that she will reach the age of 20 safely. Proof provided by “Colors of Evil: Red” (2024, Netflix) by the Polish Adrian Panek, who will apply the teaching in the center of the film industry. In doing so, he departs from the aesthetic traditions of Eastern European cinema.
The meeting was held at the “Dockyard Club”, a youth meeting place. The name of the place has echoes in Polish history, and the city of “Gdansk” on the Baltic Sea, where Andrzej Wajda filmed “Iron Man” (1981). Old people love the young daughters of rich people, who do not eat much bread, so their image is still just like a ruler, and this temptation may be a disaster. What are the most dangerous embalmed criminals?
What do we call a regular visitor to a night bar?
– Heather.
Does this justify killing her?
– No.
The police are not concerned about people’s jobs, but about protecting their lives. So, serial killer movies are more interesting. The young woman pays attention to strangers, and is reprimanded by the people closest to her. Murder is a much more interesting crime. Spilled blood increases the level of continuity in politics and drama. Poland has become more decent in 2023. Without modern state power, women return to the terrible times of slavery.
As in all police films, the events begin at the end, after the horrific crime, which justifies the desperate investigation. Short stories emerge, some entwining others like layers of an onion. Behind every shell is a story, another shell is another story. This complexity enables the extension of suspense, which carries its lightness. Scientific research and uncontrolled mafia violence come together. Police detective Sherlock Holmes is a chemist who has a scientific answer to every incident. There is no room for imagination in the courts.
A clinical autopsy is being carried out on the remains of the crime. To change the tone and the subject, she gives some information about the investigator’s life, to reduce the focus on the crime. Then there is the complex research to entice and inspire the viewer. Evidence is found and proven, and a crime can be disguised to hide its features and mislead investigators. In a detective film, it is forbidden to find the secret and the real criminal in the first hour. Tension is created by people who are not connected to the crime, to force them to give information. The chase begins after an hour, and the suspense tightens within the framework of the film’s genre characteristics.
The film ends with the reward for every skilled investigator: finding conclusive evidence that will put the criminal in prison forever. This picture was produced in “Colors of Evil.” These are standards adopted by major producers and broadcast platforms that target millions of viewers.
Netflix uses an audio-visual storytelling style. It is no coincidence that in mid-2024 it has 282 million subscribers, more than half of whom are women. Each participant has four screens. For these, Adrian Panek provides a visual and audio commentary that meets the rhythm standards of American cinema. A narrative in a light style that contrasts with the controversial touch of the founder of Polish cinema, Wajda.
This raises a question: What happens to a country’s cinema when Netflix absorbs and finances its directors? In theme, the films become crimes and investigations. Stylistically, telling an exciting, fast-paced linear story becomes an artistic imperative. In the age of globalization, societies become similar, as crime stories and investigative methods become similar and global. How does the art director maintain the uniqueness of his story, rhythm and style? This is a challenge.
Creators try to rebel against established traditions, to clarify their artistic mark, and they have to work according to the standards of the center, to earn money and public legitimacy.
With the goal of moving the film sequence from the screenwriter to the director, Andre Bazin asked: How does the directing style and structure reflect the director’s vision? With Netflix’s hundreds of millions of dollars, the question becomes: How does the management style and structure reflect the vision of the producer?
Polish directors have long been careful about their style. What is the non-Netflix style in Polish cinema? EO, Jerzej Skolimowski’s (2022) Turas an Asail Aoireil is a good example. The film was shown at many festivals, and critics wrote about it according to their artistic taste, and they are opponents of the “Netflix” taste oligarchy. The donkey courageously discovers human folly that has been committed. The donkey knew the circus, and this is a place where a variety of people and animals live together. The donkey plays a large role in religion and ancient literature. The monster donkey Lucius Apuleius (170 AD) was spying on people. The donkey saw the fools that his rider who accompanied Don Quixote would promise. The donkey is a symbol of innocence, like Dostoyevsky’s “fool” who is caught by braying the donkey. According to a prophetic hadith, a donkey brays when it sees a devil.
Donkey Skolimowski (1938), the contemporary director Andrzej Wajda’s (1926-2016) way of thinking with irony and absurdity. Think long, philosophical but non-narrative pictures. Unstoppable views. Skolimowski’s painting of a raw donkey, without visual effects, did not attract viewers with a global taste. EO is not a film that deals with globalization, like a suspenseful detective investigation into the evil of red lips.
In this trade-style contradiction, what happens to a country’s cinema when Netflix absorbs and finances its directors? It often loses its rural, peasant, meditative rhythm, in the conflict between the author’s cinematography and the people’s cinematography. No matter how strong the funding, a skilled director can convey his style.
To avoid generalizations: To what extent are these directors, who love artistic independence, able to take on the rhythm of the “Netflix” narrative, and at the same time the style and vision of cinematography to maintain? The answer, based on “Colors of Evil”: Adrian Panic created the situation with a camera. The beauty of the actors’ movement reveals the meaning of the scene and its sociological significance. Filming was done in places with sophisticated architecture. The bourgeois decoration leaves the economic reasons for crime unmotivated. The investigator turns to a psychoanalyst, who tells him that mentally ill people do not kill themselves. Only reasonable people kill themselves. The Polish leader has the skill to use the place semantically, to confirm the position of a prosecutor in charge of infiltration police. Two employees argued about the approach to work. One of them wants to find the truth, and the other wants to fulfill the order of his boss. In the next scene, the first worker is still lost in place, and the second confidently climbs the marble stairs. There is institutional corruption that covers personal crimes. The interest is mutual.
