“He won't listen to anybody. He's been very crazy all summer. Since June he's been trying to kill me.”

– Leon

Ramadan [on the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, not mid-August]: someone atones or fasts*

“These people have faith in me, and I have faith in their faith.”

– Swami Ji

Due to a simple misunderstanding, a farmer mistakes tour guide Raju for a holy man. When drought hits the land, the village fool tells the townspeople that Raju, now known as Swami Ji, will fast for twelve days to bring the rain. During his reluctant fast, Raju undergoes a spiritual transformation.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Violet: a building or structure *

“Is it the form of the clouds, or the tints of the sky, or the colours of the surrounding objects which are so changeable, which have troubled my thoughts as they passed before my eyes? Who can tell?”

– Guy de Maupassant, Le Horla, 1887 (via)

Objects and rooms have distinct colours ranging from the deepest blues and violets to a pale lavender, a muted silver and shocks of yellow. The usage of colour in Le Horla is striking throughout and reminds me of how Van Gogh's paintings became increasingly colourful as his madness enveloped him.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Indigo, in food or fashion*

“He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended. “

– George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) (via)

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Holi: someone is forgiven (forgiveness being an important aspect of Holi)*

“Pray for me. I forgive the evil done me.”

– Jeanne d'Arc

Jeanne trusts her delusions to forgive the people who brought her to justice.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Indigo: a building or structure*

Him: It’s a film? Her: It would have been a film.

A truck, both the narrative structure and his (Depardieu's character) material representation. She – the director – and he – the lead actor – do a read-though while discussing her script. A communist truck driver picks up a female hitchhiker. They discuss the landscape, the cosmos, pointlessness, communism of course. All the while, the indigo truck plods on.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Cerulean, or blue: in food or fashion*

“I'm just fine. I have everything here. I have the TV. You can see the whole world”

– the mother

How could I not pick at least one instalment of Kieślowski's Trois couleurs trilogy. Here's blue, the liberté of the tricolor. Blue occurs as the sky to fall through, the room without life, and the cloth that binds.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.

Someone opens fire on August 15, the day of Ferragosto and the Virgin's Assumption

 

Celebrating Oktoberfest [in September/October] and the Bavarian royals [rip]: a royal character or family*

“The painter takes his time. He doesn't like her dress. He doesn't like her gloves. One day he asks her if she dares pose for him – all in pink. She dares! And the king, enraptured by her pose, offers her a palace!”

– circus master

Maria Dolores Porriz y Montez, Countess von Landsfeld, Lola Montès for short, now a circus attraction, once the mistress to Ludwig I, King of Bavaria. While her fellow circus performers play Lola's former lovers, the ringmaster tells her story.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for August is not date-related but lists, for the most part, the colours of the rainbow.