Why are the Tarot cards in color?
Just wondering, why is the opening scene of tarot cards in color but everything else, including the shots of the leading lady and the card reader in the same scene, in b&w?
shareVarda has explained that she chose colour (bearing in mind that colour was much more expensive than black and white film stock) for the Prologue to show that the tarot cards are superstitious, irrational, 'fiction', not reality, not scientific fact. Yet, the tarot reader gets every aspect of Cléo's life right. We can therefore be tempted to assume that she has also correctly predicted Cléo's death...
shareAlthough the cards can be read metaphorically, and the predicted death is in fact the end of an old way of lfie & the beginning of a new one, since during the limbo of awaiting the doctor's report, she is in a very real sense reborn as a new person.
shareshe has also correctly predicted Cléo's deathYes but it can be read in a different way. We are mortals and so is Cleo but she seems to believe in the illusion of beauty to sustain her from death. The death card that appears in Cleo's spread shows transformation, which the card reader says. Cleo is transformed as a character. She clearly has cancer and it may be the cause of her death but will that be immediate, as Cleo fears, or her future cause of death, as any of us have a cause of death? I think it can be read in both ways; that Cleo will not survive the radiation treatment and die quickly from cancer, or that she gets to live longer and is killed by cancer eventually.
Movement ends, intent continues;share
Intent ends, spirit continues
True but even the fact that she dies on cancer is just the subjective reading of the card reader.
I think that's a part of the film too: subjective interpretations of situations and happenstances.