The film, Beanpole, by Kantemir Balagov, revealed post soviet Russian female World

War II veterans’ living status, through showing how they were deeply wounded physically and
mentally. In the film, the director used contrasting coloring red, green and mediating color
yellow as the main color themes of the film. The usage of red is to symbolize infertility, death
and trauma from war, and green to symbolize fertility and hope. The use of these colors created a
strong visual impact by associating with physiological changes of the protagonists and also
revealed how war sabotaged the protagonists.
In the beginning of the film, the protagonist Iya is presented frozen in the laundry room
due to her sudden outbreak of the seizure. The scene starts with a closeup shot, with 3/4 of her
face under the soft yellow lighting, camera shaking rhythmically as if mimicking her glitches.
Her green bowtie being the most saturated color in scene, contrasting with the brick red aprons
the workers wear in the background. Following by the zoom out of the camera, the audiences are
then able to see that the scene was shot from the height of Iya, and revealing that besides her
abnormal seizure, she’s also taller than the rest of the crowd. Her tall figure is actually the only
motionless figure in the scene, thus creates even more contrast with the workers in the
background, emphasizing her peculiarity. The warm yellow lighting creates an overwhelming
feeling almost synching with what Iya was dealing with at the moment. By portraying Iya as a
distinctive character through color and motion, the focus is fixed on this character, provoking
interest and empathy towards this protagonist.
As the story proceeds, the redhead protagonist Masha enters the scene, forming contrast
with the protagonist Iya in personality and visual image. Her visual image is strongly correlated
with highly saturated red, from her hair color, her frequent nose bleed, to her outfit color choice.
The directorial choices of this character are alluding to the violence of war and moodiness as a
result of the war. This color stands on the opposite side of color green on the color scheme,
symbolizing her contrast in visual image and personality with Iya. The cinematic scenes are
alluding to signs of her infertile, wounded and traumatized body. However as a character with
this red color, she possessed much movements, as if implying her longing for a chance of
fertility, which could be interpreted as persistence and even stubbornness, due to the societal
expectations on women after World War II. In the scene where she attempts to conceive a child
with Sasha, the overall environment light is faint yellow, however the scene was given a green
filter, as if implying her attempt for fertilization. The red side lighting from the left of the scene
where Masha is, implies the fact that regardless her attempts, she is still infertile. Her action are
quick, aggressive and violent, to herself and Sacha, further stressing her sadness of losing her
child, and her obsession of this dream of becoming a mother.
In the later scene of Masha and Sasha painting the house, green paint drips from the wall
covering the red wall, the directorial choice metaphorically implied they’re ditching the past and

 creating a home for their future, however it’s followed by a quick cut from the scene where Iya is
diagnosed as not pregnant in the hospital, hinting the fact that this dream would not come true.
What’s more, the close up shot to the dripping green paint is visually similar to dripping green
blood, indicating how this dream of fertility was built upon Iya’s involuntary suffering. The
scene was followed by the camera shifting from Sasha and Masha, with Sasha being shot from
low angle, implying male being the dominant role in relationships within post Soviet Union’s
patriarchal social structure, even with his facial expressing flattery and confusion. Men are the
involuntary beneficiary, whilst women suffer to realizing these mens’ desires.
In the scene of Masha twirling in the green dress, color red and green intertwined on the
wall, alluding to the protagonists affecting each other. The close up towards the twirling
gossamery green dress along with the handheld camera gave out a buoyant almost dizzy
sensation. The directorial choice of displaying small red polka dots on the dress through the close
up first adds weight to this floaty prop, pulling it back to the reality, and also stresses the truth
with this color’s symbolic meaning of infertility and trauma that Masha’s wish to have a new
wholesome family is unreal. The following scene of Masha uncontrollably spinning in the dress
provided a similar sense to the Danish fairy tale De røde sko (The red shoe), for both characters
are nearly taken control by their desires. The diegetic sound changes from joyful chuckles to
heavy breathing sounds, which presents a similar sound effect towards Iya’s seizure sounds. The
swirling takes place in this small room where her child who’s also her hope vanished, where she
abused her friend Iya for her selfish desires. The directorial choice of showing some sort of
freedom in this limited space was quite an irony, as if she’s a canary not able to escape the cage
even in this wishful beautiful dress on her. The green dress with the red polka dots is a directorial
allude to Masha’s lost in hope, her pain, her wish being broken even with the sugar coated
illusion the dress gave her. Her pain was the outcome of the realization that this moment of
freedom and joy is still a lie.
As the romance between Masha and Sasha prolongs and enhances, symbolic colors red
and green started appearing on the opposite characters Masha and Iya. Red yarn appears on Iya’s
sweater, and green strips appear on Masha’s sweater. In the scene where the characters consume
meal together, the room was freshly painted with green color under a low key yellow lighting.
The juxtaposition of the two colors is a directorial metaphor implying the two main protagonists
interacting with each other and bringing their world to each others’. For Iya, the red color is
given by Masha as a negative result of encountering with Masha. She was forced to intercourse
with Andrey almost violently, and the red resembles the wound due to this act. The red is a brutal
demand on the land of fertility, for the country’s only able to recover from the ruins if there’re
future generations, as in the poster shown in the hospital when Iya went to pregnancy check. But
this belief didn’t take in consideration of the women’s mindset of becoming mothers, thus

 leaving the fertile land wounded and traumatized, visually illustrated through color red on the
green sweater. Iya’s affection towards Masha wasn’t understood, and Iya bringing up her anger
towards Masha after Masha brought Sasha in reveals the change in her personality due to
Masha’s interference, that her finally being able to become demanding and dominant just like
Masha who gave her this red color.
However on the opposite side, Masha is slowly cured after reuniting with Iya. The green
appearing on her symbolizes hope and future, brought by her relationship with Sasha and Iya’s
puking and postponed menstruation which could symbolize pregnancy. This weaved color is the
visual result of the encountering of the two protagonists, visually alluding to the changes of the
protagonists.
In this film, the directorial choice of using two contrasting colors depicting the two
protagonist formed a strong visual contrast, aiding with the portraying of the character in their
personalities and their changes visually. As the film went further, the two contrasting colors
mixed into each other on the protagonists, symbolizing the land of Russia after World War Two
even deeply traumatized, partially infertile with color red, but was still remained with hope and a
chance of fertility with the green color.