The film named Hero (2002) is also directed by the Chinese director named Yimou Zhang. It is not only a typical Chinese martial art film that talks about historical stories happened in Qin Dynasty , but also be considered as a blockbuster and a milestone in the era of Chinese movies. Since Hero (2002) opens a new epoch in the development of Chinese commercial films, and also play an important role in promoting the booming of Chinese films industry.
One of the most representative feature based on visual aesthetic of this film is the use of color. Five main characters in this film wear costumes in five color, that are green, red, black, blue and white. Zhang use these five colors to represent five different stories, and also suggest five different fortunes of characters in the film. Specifically speaking, red represents ‘impulse’ and ‘envy’, and suggests that the character wear red costume always act too subjectively and radically. The character who is the first emperor of Qin wear black costume, and the black represents ‘calmness’ and ‘mysterious’. At the same time, some historical resources showed that this emperor like black. Therefore, the black also suggests that the king of Qin is always cogitative.
There are also some sequences showed ‘killing scenes’ conclude warm tonality, and dominated by different layers of dull-red. Combined with the ‘red costume’ and ‘red lip-stick’ of character, the feeling and atmosphere of ‘gory’, ‘cruel’, ‘massacre’ and ‘oppressive’ could be created. The use of ‘red’ here represents ‘bloody’ instead of ‘joyous’. According to this, we can see that Zhang use different color to express the emotion and personalities of various characters, and help both actors and audiences more easier to feel mood of different character, and understand entire story in a more orderly way.
References:
Hero (2002) Directed by Yimou Zhang [Film], China: New Pictures Film Company.
SXL 
This film is one of my favourite film as well, and Yimou Zhang uses the color in a really distinctive way, which make most of scenes look really beautiful, i like the analyze of color of you this piece, well done !
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Yimou Zhang is one of my farouite director, and his use of color on most of film productions, especially for his early films are really impressed!
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Another awesome film from ZHANG YIMOU!! Really like this directer! As one of the fifth generation directors, many special film techniques used by him are really attractive and impressive, for example the color use in this film. We can say that he opened a new era for Chinese film industry. Like your analysis about costumes of characters in different colors, that is attractive and reasonable.
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yes he is one of the fifth generation director, and I think that the use of color could be one of his distinctive characteristic in the whole cinematic market.
I wish to discuss about Chinese fifth generation directors with you sometime in the future!
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