Analyses of Juice
Juice, directed by Ernest R. Dickerson, is a film about a group of inner-city hoodlums of Harlem that try to find happiness through power called “the juice”. This film seems to rely heavily on the color, lines, contrast and affinity to help the audience feel what the characters feel in the city. Red symbolizes strong emotion such as confidence and love, but it can also symbolize death. For example, the picture shows Raheem (Khalil Kain) wearing a red jacket.
Raheem is basically the leader of the group, but as the story progresses he loses control and gets shot by Bishop (Tupac Shakur). In that scene Raheem is wearing a yellow hoodie, so that the red blood is more dominant when he gets shot.
Bishop also shoots another one of his friends, Steel (Jermaine “Huggy” Hopkins), who is wearing a very distinct red jacket that stands out from the surrounding environment because it’s dark and gloomy.
Bishop, the antagonist, is the one of the main character that wears blue or black through majority of the film. Blue doesn’t stick out as much as the red does in the film making the red pretty much the most dominant color throughout. Bishop wearing blue or sometimes black helps the audiences understand his inner mood throughout the film, dark and not happy. Q (Umar Epps) and Steel wear blue during the scene where Bishop shoots Raheem in the chest because this also expresses sadness and darkness for the loss of a friend. As the audience can tell, this image of Q and Steel has affinity because it is not very visually intense. In all the night and day scenes, there is a lot of affinity, but towards the end when Q and Bishop confront each other at night, there is higher visual intensity.
Q is waiting under a streetlight, which gives Q the center of attention in the dark city until Bishop shows up. The audience draws their eyes to bishop because he stands out in the shadows, which is an example of contrast. This helps add suspense to the film and almost gives the film a noir feel to it in some aspects, like lines.
Juice incorporates a lot of lines and shapes in pretty much every scene through lights, shadows of objects, and lines of the environment. This film takes place in the city where lines are everywhere; light poles, buildings, roads, sidewalks, and window frames.
During the scene were Raheem gets shot, there are a lot of lines created by light coming from doorways and windows. One image that stood out was when an apartment light turned on, the light helped create a silhouette of the many lines from the window frame and other things.
Juice is broken up into two words: the day and the night. The day is where characters hid there true self and everyone blends into the environment. The day scenes have a lot affinity and colors that generally blend in with everything and do not stand out. The night scenes are where the characters show there true selves in a place the strong can only survive. The night scenes incorporate high contrast with colors that stand out and lines created by city lights.
