FRAME BY FRAME | RATCHED E very Ryan Murphy project is visually delightful, with the costumes and sets as intricately thought out as the storylines. And yet with Ratched – an origin story for nurse Mildred Ratched, the villain from author Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Milos Forman’s film adaptation with the same name – Murphy outdoes himself, showcasing an electrifying colour palette that manifests a dazzlingly gruesome story. “Green is a signifying colour, used throughout the show’s costumes and sets to express the characters’ shared feelings of lust, envy and greed for power,” says Ratched ’s DOP, Simon Dennis. Mildred and head nurse Betsy Bucket wear blue-green, long-sleeved, belted dresses, while the trainee nurses don short-sleeved styles, with pale green aprons over the top. Hues of green can also be found on the plush exterior of wealthy heiress Lenore Osgood’s home, which masks the insidious plans taking place inside its walls. Similarly, the fluorescent green curtains in Mildred’s motel room work as a backdrop to the schemes that she concocts there. In certain scenes, flashes of green light take over the frame. It’s a jarring effect, but a powerful display of the characters becoming overwhelmed by their feelings. We first see this in episode 1, when Mildred goes to the hospital for a prospective job interview and accidentally walks in on a trainee nurse in the most unorthodox position with a patient. She walks away. Her movement is distorted, and the frame turns green. She’s feeling lust, envy and greed for power all at once, and we later learn that she used what she saw as leverage to get the job. Flashes of red light are used to similar effect, but they represent “love, a loss of command over one’s reality and the presence of danger”, explains Dennis. Head doctor, Dr Hanover, is often drenched in red lighting whenever he gets high, conveying a loss of control over his professional façade. Interestingly, these light changes were done in camera: “We pre-rigged the set practicals to change from ‘white’ light to red or green, so the
Green is a signifying colour, used throughout the show’s costumes and sets
suffocating wounded soldiers with a pillow is how McMurphy [Jack Nicholson’s character] is murdered in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . These subtle touches are fresh and bold but respect the ultimate destination of the original story.” EPISODE EIGHT The series finale, episode 8, was Dennis’ favourite to shoot, filmed on a Red Helium with Arri Ultra Primes. It opens with a touching moment between Mildred and her lover Gwendolyn, whose hidden affair gave the show “heart” against the “twisted, deranged and bizarrely colour-coded world that we had created,” according to Dennis. “We leaned into their closeted relationship with more coverage that ‘connects’ them in some way. Even the tiny gestures they make – for example, when the camera boomed
actors were able to react to the light and the feelings it evoked in the moment. Colour shifts done in post-production would have looked too gimmicky,” says Dennis. Greens and reds were very famously used by Hitchcock in his films’ settings to express the emotions of the characters. “ Vertigo , in particular, was Ryan Murphy’s foremost reference for the series,” explains Dennis. Ratched also lends itself to other classic horror and noir films from that era, with a grandiose setting for a hospital that is much like Stanley Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel in The Shining . “Being an origin story to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – which is one of my favourites – Forman’s film was referenced, and I always had that in mind when thinking about the greater picture,” he says. “Ryan Murphy would often plant homages to the film. For example, Mildred
08 DEF I N I T ION | NOVEMBER 2020
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