| *Note: Contains Plot Spoilers* An Introduction: My first contact with Krzysztof Kieslowski’s breathtaking Three Colors came one winter night when I watched the Golden Globes and noticed a few nominations for the film Blue. I was probably thirteen at the time—sitting in a darkened basement after the kids I’d babysat had fallen asleep and I found myself filled with intrigue as I watched those haunting images emerge onscreen. I never forgot the mystical feeling Kieslowski’s cinema evoked just from those precious clips aired on the Golden Globes. Later, I become better acquainted with the works from television’s Siskel and Ebert—most notably from Ebert who has been championing the trilogy since its debut and broke his own top ten rules both the year the films were released in 1994 and when tallying up the best films of the 90’s alongside Martin Scorsese, by including all three as one work. Originally, I saw the films in reverse order and to this day remain so enraptured by the artistic audacity and compassionate humanity that a viewing of Red inspires that, like a great novel, I find myself revisiting it every year or so (careful not to view too much as to become insensitive) in order to see how the work affects me and how my understanding, age and life experience causes the meanings to evolve. The three films, which a few years ago were released lovingly filled with enough extras to provide a home version of film school, were inspired by the colors of the French flag and each deals with the connotations associated: Blue is for freedom, White stands for equality and Red applauds fraternity or brotherhood. For many years, I preferred the three in the reverse order that I’d originally seen them but watching them this time, realize that life experience has caused my philosophies to shift—Red still towers over the others and remains a personal favorite to this day, but the black anti-comedy of White has slipped into third place as I rediscovered Blue and found more with which to identify as a mature woman. So much has been written on the techniques and philosophical implications of The Three Colors that a traditional academic approach would be a useless extravagance—an excess of parroted research and citations of great film professors and thinkers. Instead, like the judge in Red who is looking back at his life, I decided to go on a personal journey with the films, looking at the ways Kieslowski uses his characters to make us think about our own lives by weaving in both traditional film study and thoughtful responses to each individual work. 1) Blue The film Blue is quintessential Kieslowski. He takes what film critic and Kieslowski expert Annette Insdorf said could’ve been the highly political concept of freedom and turns it into a personal/psychological look at the idea of liberty from the interior mind of a female. Juliette Binoche portrays Julie, who, at the beginning of the film is cruelly liberated by the tragic death of her world-renowned composer husband and child in a car accident of which she is the sole survivor. At first, Julie grapples with the deaths by attempting a quickly aborted suicide but once she gets out of the hospital, she closes up their large home and moves into a crummy apartment complex, cutting herself off completely from her work, friends and any connection to the outside world. Since as Binoche notes, life has been hard on Julie, Julie decides to be equally hard on life, acting out in self-destructive ways that range from crunching down on a sucker so severely it’s a wonder teeth aren’t broken, sleeping with her husband’s colleague in order to demystify herself since he’d always placed her on a romantic pedestal, and running her knuckles harshly along a jagged wall. She imprisons herself with this new freedom, seldom leaving her apartment and visits her mother who watches television as a way to witness the outside world. They watch a man bungee jump onscreen together—this symbolic act seems to foreshadow that Julie will need to take a risk, make a jump and give up this imposed freedom. She does so when the outside world interferes with her melancholic solitude—discovering her husband had a pregnant mistress and being forced to complete a symphony with her husband’s colleague, revealing to viewers that Julie may have in fact been the composer all along under her husband’s name. There’s a meditative quality to the cinematography with the heightened blues invading each frame and some wonderful symbolism, especially concerning a pool in which Julie regularly swims laps. Juliette Binoche explains on the DVD that the pool itself (a device suggested by the cinematographer) represents life and death and Julie is swimming between the two. There’s a beautiful, brief image of rebirth that Binoche carries out when Julie begins to emerge from the pool and the symphony fills the soundtrack. Using music to suggest her state of mind, we watch as Julie sinks back into the pool, gets into the fetal position and then exits the pool like a fetus being reborn— the water serving as a baptismal life force. Binoche’s magnificent performance is the strongest of the three films and as Ebert notes, the film is an “anti-tragedy”—it solidifies Kieslowski in his “post-feminist” phase that Senses of Cinema said marked his later female-centric works and it’s fascinating that this usage of liberty is to show its limits and not offer the clichéd Bridget Jones type of female proclamation of independence. Kieslowski seems to reason that true liberty isn’t possible after all. Annette Insdorf notes that Julie must open herself up to her immediate environment and those around her, as there’s an obligation to life continuing that goes against the idea of true liberty, which Kieslowski embraces. 2) White Perhaps more than any other image from the entire trilogy, the opening shot of White, which shows a suitcase traveling on an airport conveyor belt remains the most memorable of The Three Colors. Only after the final credits begin, do we realize that contained in that suitcase, is our fateful hero, Karol Karol, a sad Polish citizen who sneaks back into the country of his birth after his icy French wife divorces him for being unable to consummate the marriage. White stands for equality and it’s evident early on in the film that in France, Karol is unequal to his beautiful young wife mostly because he is unable to speak the language. Seen today in a state where we’re holding an election to decide whether or not to exclude illegal immigrants and non-English speakers from rights guaranteed to English speaking Americans, it gets us even more involved in the plight of our sad sack hero. The film, according to Annette Insdorf, relies heavily on voyeurism—it’s a Hitchcockian device made all the more intriguing being that our hero is impotent. However, unlike Hitchcock’s use of voyeurism in classic works like Rear Window or Vertigo, Kieslowski’s aim isn’t to make us feel guilty for watching Karol spy on the woman he still loves and idealizes but rather as Insdorf notes it’s a gentle voyeurism indicative of the filmgoer and used simply to evoke sympathy. Further influence of Hitchcock can be identified in the casting of Julie Delpy as Karol’s wife— like Hitch’s frequent fascination with cool blondes, this “golden-tressed goddess” (Insdorf) is perfectly cast as we quickly learn that she’s quite cold and calculating with much more going on under the surface than her angelic looks imply. Her cunning and evil revenge for his impotence causes her to freeze his accounts, burn down her own hair salon (framing him) and letting him hear her making love to another man over the phone. The luminous Julie Delpy was exploited in the advertising for the film with a box illustrating White as an erotic delight although there is very little sex in the film itself. In an exclusive interview, Delpy addresses the work, which she considers to be “a dark fable with a touch of humor in it.” Critics agree with some referring to it as an “anti- comedy” (Ebert) and its humor is as Geoff Andrews notes, pretty broad—a very black comedy that ironically is given the opposite color for its title of White. Much of the humor of the work comes from the external environment, misfortunes or accidental encounters and the most seemingly insignificant of objects. This comedic tone and plot involving Karol attempting to get revenge on his wife by becoming a successful capitalist (now that the communist rule in Poland has finished) and then faking his own death and implicating his wife, has made the work seem like the weakest link in the series. While it is perhaps the least emotionally involving or earth shattering of the three, it provides a much-needed bittersweet piece to the puzzle of the trilogy. When I was a younger film buff, fascinated by complicated plots and neo-noirs, I found the greatest inspiration in works with many twists and turns so White was my second-favorite in the series. It didn’t seem to fit in with the others as much but today, while I admit that it has slipped into third place, after studying the ways in which Kieslowski cherished ironies and dark humor—this pessimistic tale seems to provide the perfect set-up for the moral uplift of Red. It’s also the only one of the three films featuring a man in the lead role, although as mentioned earlier, most advertising featured Delpy. Cited by Geoff Andrews as the trilogy’s most extroverted performance, Zbignew Zamachowski is wonderful playing the Nabokovian-inspired hero (his name Karol Karol seems to recall Lolita's Humbert Humbert). While he’s perhaps less noble than the women in Blue and Red, we recognize the intense love he feels for his wife and worry when, as predicted, his plan succeeds but he finds that once they have become equals, they’re both imprisoned by circumstance. The confusing plot caused many friends to view the film a second time in order to fully grasp the nuances and the ending, which Delpy notes was shot during Red when Kieslowski decided he needed to soften or humanize her character, has caused much debate. Having faked his own death, Karol becomes touched when he sees his wife cry at his funeral. He later has a romantic reunion with her and finally manages to consummate the marriage with his wife (after they’ve been divorced) before disappearing to allow her to take the fall for his “murder.” Once she is imprisoned, he realizes how much he still loves her and goes to the prison to spy on her with binoculars, a single tear falling down his cheek. Delpy’s character communicates with Karol in sign language, which, according to Delpy, translates to “when I leave, we will go away together and marry again.” However, like Delpy, the audience is never sure whether this scene is real or imaginary, if one or either character is crazy or if they genuinely feel they are communicating. Their equality has made them imprisoned (her literally in jail and him by his fake death) but as Delpy notes, Kieslowski wanted to make sure he communicated his belief that as long as there was life or love, there was still hope. 3) Red As mentioned earlier, the characters in Blue and White search for freedom and equality respectively, only to find that those goals in the strictest sense aren’t entirely what they’d imagined. According to film critic Geoff Andrews, Kieslowski argues with his study of “brotherhood/fraternity,” Red that love and compassion is in fact the thing for which we are all searching. In what would sadly be his final film before his retirement and early death from heart complications, Kieslowski seems to have made the film he’d been striving to create his entire life and those who’ve seen his earlier works including The Decalogue and The Double Life of Veronique will find foreshadowing and small details he pulled perfectly out of his hat like a magician with Red. The visuals and music in the film are used at their expressive best (Andrews) and every frame drips with text and subtext, making it vital for repeated viewings in order to appreciate its many layers. Annette Insdorf explains that Red was to be his summation work and that he didn’t want to repeat himself on film anymore and had found limitations with the medium that weren’t present in literature. Andrews concludes that above all Red seemed to be a “thank you” film for his audience who’d stood by him throughout his career. The film was also a valentine to its star, Irene Jacob (whose character is ironically named Valentine). Kieslowski had worked with Jacob in Veronique before and had written this part specifically for the actress, whom Andrews proclaims Kieslowski seemed to have fallen a bit in love with during their work together. Jacob has a natural openness of spirit and great warmth (Insdorf), which seems to radiate off the screen from the moment the audience first sees her. We’re instantly connected with this woman and as Indsorf notes, Valentine is the only character in the trilogy that assists an elderly woman recycling a bottle (she’d been struggling to do so as characters in the other films looked on apathetically). Jacob’s relationship with Kieslowski was so strong that she was able to suggest a rewrite when she found the first draft too idealized and the female character not deep enough. Her instincts regarding Valentine paid off and convinced Kieslowski, who made her character more complicated by adding in some back story and family issues that help explain her interactions. The film contains Kieslowski’s trademark ideas of fate, destiny, coincidence, accidents (happy and otherwise) and missed or made human connections in its tale of a young model and student (Jacob) who befriends a retired judge. The judge, who seems to represent Kieslowski (according to Andrews and his friend Agnieska Holland), spends his time spying on his neighbors with high tech recording equipment, listening to their phone calls and finding him involved in their lives. While most people would want nothing to do with such a human being, Insdorf shares that Red “is a film against indifference,” and that Jacob’s character is simply “good”—wanting to reach out and understand another human being to find out his motivations. Her request that he stop spying makes him do so—together the two challenge and provoke each other and bond. It quickly becomes evident to the viewer that the judge has two personas in the film—the elderly judge of Valentine’s acquaintance and a younger man whose life shares many similarities with the older man. Fascinated by Kierkegaard’s Repetition or the idea of living past mistakes over when one is older and has gained wisdom, the film can be read as Jacob states as “a look at later life and early life” and what happens after your hopes and dreams don’t work out as planned. Critics have called the film one of the most intriguing studies of “platonic love” ever filmed and perhaps by including this second aspiring judge audiences realize that if the older man were Valentine’s age, the two would’ve been soul mates. There is also a question of whether or not the judge is a God- like figure—one who looks over and “judges” his neighbors. Although he doesn’t have any perceived mystical God-like power, it is the judge who helps steer Valentine to her fate and advises her to leave for her getaway on a ferry. The ferry ends up crashing and only a few people are saved in what Insdorf says is a Noah’s Ark of the previous films as two from each film in the trilogy are saved including Valentine and the young judge who’ ve finally met and may at last become romantically involved. The end of the film manages to find hope even in the tragedy of the ferry accident and contains once again, a close-up of a character looking voyeuristically—this time around, the character is the judge (or Kieslowski) and as Insdorf proclaims, he’s looking at us, the audience and implicating us in his final humanity and realization that there’s more to his life than he’ d imagined. In Conclusion: Red is a masterpiece and one of the all-time great foreign imports ever to hit American soil. Like the judge who seems to find an inspiration for life or a breath of fresh air in Valentine (echoing the artist/muse idea of Kieslowski and Jacob), viewers find they are uplifted and hugged cinematically by this intelligent and inspiring work that will continue to awe viewers every time they see it. Tragically, it’s the last film released by Kieslowski, who after “retiring” seemed to change his mind and was working on Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. The completed script for Heaven was filmed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) a few years ago but, while it’s a good film, like Spielberg tackling Kubrick’s A.I. we wonder how the original master would’ve made it. On the DVD for Red, Annette Insdorf asks a question she cannot answer, wondering if Kieslowski, that great lover of destiny, perhaps knew of his mortality (his own father had died young and he’d always been in ill health) and that’s why he chose to make so many films so quickly. Or she wonders if it was the pace and the production schedule of cranking out so much in the last years of his life that ended up destroying his heart. I don’t want to think the latter—although to be killed by cinema is the dream of great directors like Scorsese who once proclaimed he would die behind a camera. No, in my mind, like the judge in Red who seems to know what’s in Valentine’s future, Kieslowski knew his time was limited and decided to live out his life to the max, looking back like the judge in ways of being able to reinterpret his past. It’s a strange idea for someone who doesn’t believe in the paranormal, but then again, I believe in the power of cinema, and Kieslowski’s Three Colors can make a believer out of anyone. |
Film Intuition
| The Three Colors Trilogy: A Viewer's Guide to Kieslowski's Blue, White & Red By Jen Johans |
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(c) Jen Johans. filmintuition.com
