The Miraculous Manu Memorial Movie Month, Mmmmm!

The Usual Suspects (1995)

A lot of movies use, and overuse, the blue/orange color scheme, using digital color grading to force everything in the movie into those two categories so it really "pops." Go ahead and Google "blue orange movies" or check out the TV Tropes page right now if you want a billion examples. The Usual Suspects follows in this trend, even though it predates digital color grading. It doesn't just use it to use it, though. No, it uses it with definite intention, because it integrates with its theme. Let's play detective:

During the opening credits, we slowly pan over a large body of water at night. Then, as soon as they are over:

Fwoosh! Let there be light.

We cut over here. What is that? A liquid — more water?

No, you dumbass! This is gasoline. This is firewater. Perhaps this is an early hint that our dichotomies aren't as clear-cut as we think? But wait, there's more! What's this, stopping the fire dead in its tracks?

It's, uh... water.

Back to fire.

Firewater.

Fire.

Kaboom.

So what are we supposed to make of all that? Well, now that we've seen the opening scene (which is a flashforward,) let's get into the plot a little bit. The Usual Suspects, once it's underway, is about bad versus worse, worse being Keyzer Soze, an all-powerful but well-hidden puppetmaster, and the bad, our "heroes," the guys on the cover of the box, who we can safely assume are the Usual Suspects. The man whose face we can see in the opening scene is Dean Keaton, one of the Usual Suspects, and the first action we see him do is him creating fire, though it ultimately consumes him. (Probably.) Likewise, the man whose face we can't see we come to realize is Keyzer Soze, who enters making water.

This motif is maintained throughout the film, even in scenes where there is no water nor fire, but there is blue and orange. The climactic showdown happens on a boat (water) that explodes twice, even! It could have been a train, a plane, or an automobile, but it was a boat. There's also "neutral" scenes, in the framing device police story, which tend towards green if anything.

This severe burn victim (a direct consequence of the opening scene's explosion) is being interrogated for his knowledge about Keyzer Soze, while he is being fed water (well, possibly saline solution) intravenously.

The Usual Suspects burn a police car. Immediately cut to:

Water. (Well, and the twin towers. Never forget.) Even through the very end of the movie:

Keyzer Soze takes care of one of his enemies with water...

... and the Usual Suspects take care of their enemies with fire.

A couple choice quotes:

"Dean Keaton was dead. Did you know that? He died in a fire two years ago. [...] Two people saw Dean Keaton walk into a warehouse he owned just before it blew up. They said he went in to check a leaking gas main."

"News said it's raining in New York." This line is said by one of the Usual Suspects apropos of absolutely nothing at all, tacked on to the end of a scene. It's highly conspicuous.

But in certain spots, the neat dichotomy sorta... breaks down. Here's a triumphant "Keyzer Soze" in front of a great amount of fire:

And here's the Usual Suspects in front of a great amount of water, having suffered a great loss to Keyzer Soze:

It's punctured in a few other spots too. Why? Because, as anyone knows about The Usual Suspects these days knows going in, Keyzer Soze IS Roger "Verbal" Kint, one of the five Usual Suspects on the cover and the narrator for the whole damn story, outside of the opening scene and the framing device. That's why fire, the Usual Suspects' loyal friend, can ultimately be the thing that consumes them. That's why there's water that can burn. It's not actually a dichotomy at all — two sides of the same coin are still just one coin.

Or maybe I'm just reading too much into an early example of blue/orange. One or the other.