13 - ‘A kind of bliss, a closing eyelid, a tiny fainting spell’: Zama and the Lapse into Colour

Summary

Thirty minutes before the end of Martel's Zama (2017), there is a ‘stunning, almost blinding’ cut which has been compared to the iconic cut ‘from stone age to space age’ of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Zama cuts from the eponymous protagonist's interview with the latest governor, tightly framed against the backdrop of a brownish-grey rock, to a wide open panoramic shot of bright green vegetation in intense sunlight against a turquoise sky, the first time either of these colours has featured in the palette of the film, which in its first part has been dominated by faded ochres and pinks, and in its middle section by nocturnal sequences, browns and greys. It is not only that different, brighter and more intense colours are used here and in the final third of the film, but also that the use of colour itself becomes much more noticeable. The cut signals a temporal and spatial shift, and the beginning of the third and final section of the film which takes the protagonist and a band of men, led by Captain Parrilla, into the hot, swampy forests of the Chaco and away from the relative predictability of life on the outskirts of the colonial city. The way the colour palette shifts over the course of the film echoes Diego de Zama's psychological development, from the relative stability given by his status in the early part (muted ochres, dusty reds, the deep blue of the interiors of aristocratic dwellings), to increased depression, confusion and delirium brought about by his gradual exclusion from power in the middle part (greys, blacks, browns, nocturnal sequences). In the final third, intense and bright colour evokes a new stage of delirium, as Diego de Zama, dispossessed of his former position of corregidor (magistrate) and its trappings, is left no choice but to join Parrilla's expedition into the wilderness of the Chaco. Charged by the authorities with capturing a legendary bandit, its members also represent the crazed mentality of those who, here on the extreme periphery of empire, still ventured in vain pursuit of riches.