Recreation of The Kiss

Today I will talk about my favorite tableau vivant from one of my favorite movies, Shutter Island. It is a thriller movie directed by Martin Scorsese about U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels that investigating a missing patient in a mental hospital/island. Tableau vivant in the movie is in, in my opinion, one of the most memorable and dramatic scenes of the movie which is a dream sequence of Teddy.

For those who don’t know what tableau vivant is, it is French for living pictures. To be more clear, it is recreations of famous paintings in a more dynamic mode. It can be in a music video, movie, or just a video made to create a tableau vivant.

In Shutter Island, the painting that is recreated is Gustav Klimt’s famous painting, The Kiss. The main theme of this painting is love. In the center of the canvas, there is a couple, a man kissing the woman. They are surrounded with a lighter gold than the background so they stand out in the painting. They look like they come straight from a dream which is very important because, in Shutter Island, the same scene is from a dream.

They have similarities both in mise-en-scene and context. Colors in Shutter Island, the yellow flower dress of both women, the lighting in Shutter Island that creates the same bubble kinda effect on the painting that surrounds lovers are some of the obvious similarities. Also, hand gestures and intimacy in the scene refer to the painting too.

This a very intense scene because in this dream sequence, Teddy tries to hold on to his long-gone wife that turns into ashes in the dream. The music, lighting, everything that supports the scene increase that dramatic effect. For that purpose, I believe this tableau vivant works brilliantly.