Technique relating environment and emotions/personality

I was wondering what is the technical term for the technique relating a physical environment to the mental state.

For example, I am writing about how the dim lighting and cluttered workspace of Deckard in Blade Runner reflects his detached/apathetic nature etc. What is the term used to describe this? (sort of similar to pathetic fallacy...)

Solution 1:

It's all just reflection, symbolism, metaphor, whatever. Volume, pitch, tempo, and other audio qualities of a soundtrack usually reflect the current focus in a movie. As do lighting, focal distance, distance, etc. on the video front.

I doubt there's a single academic noun(-phrase) with any particular currency in the world of movie critique, if that's what OP is looking for. Though doubtless there will be the equivalent for various pre-cinema art-forms.

Most of us just say [some characteristic] of a movie reflects or echoes [some other context, either within the movie or out in the "real world" of the audience].

Solution 2:

I'm thinking, but not sure if allegory is appropriate here, as an adjective allegorical

An Allegory is a form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy. Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.