At
Film Space: on Saturdays at 7 pm
Film Space is now
beginning its “A Month of Krzysztof Kieslowski” featuring
the Three Colors Trilogy, films of which I am very fond, plus his
The Double Life of Veronique.
Film Space is to the
right and in the back of the CMU Art Museum, in the Media Arts and
Design building across from the ballet school. Now that the weather
is cool, they are resuming their rooftop showings, weather
permitting. You might want to bring something to sit on or lie on. A
contribution is requested in the donation box at the entrance. Well
worth supporting.
At
Film Space on December 6, 7 pm:
Trois
Couleurs: Bleu / Three Colors: Blue (1993)
by Krzysztof Kieslowski –
100 mins – France, Drama. English subtitles. Reviews: Universal
acclaim: 84 out of 100.
With
Juliette Binoche, Benoît Régent, Florence Pernel,
Charlotte Véry, Hélène Vincent, Philippe Volter,
Claude Duneton, Hugues Quester, Emmanuelle Riva.
“Three
Colors: Blue is the first part of Kieslowski's trilogy on
France's national motto: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Blue is
the story of Julie who loses her husband, an acclaimed European
composer, and her young daughter in a car accident. The film's theme
of liberty is manifested in Julie's attempt to start a new life free
of personal commitments, belongings, grief, and love. She intends to
spiritu
ally
commit suicide by withdrawing from the world and live completely
independently, anonymously and in solitude in the Parisian
metropolis. Despite her intentions, people from her former and
present life intrude with their own needs. However...”
–
Alliance
Française description
In
Blue, you will be struck by the powerful performance of
Juliette Binoche in what is basically a solo performance. It has been
said that her face shows clearly what she is thinking all the time.
Well, not all the time for me. Most of the time, yes, but at a couple
of key points I was suddenly at a complete loss as to what was going
on in her mind, and it was a puzzle that I needed to figure out.
Kieslowski
obviously wants to key these three films and their themes in some way
to the French flag and the French motto of Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity: blue, white, and red are continually referred to in the
film, as well as in the titles. At one point in the first film, we
see the protagonist Julie carrying a box which, as a close-up shows,
has prominently written across it the word "blanco",
Spanish for white; in the next shot we are looking at her from
behind, and she pauses in the street as a man in blue passes her on
her left and a woman in red passes her on her right. This is a
not-so-subtle reference to the structure of the Three Colors
trilogy - blue, white, red, in that order, mirroring the French flag.
And
then again, During one swimming scene in the blue pool, children in
red and white bathing suits run out and jump in the water -- another
reference to the trilogy (blue, white, and red).
And
in the first film, Blue, there is blue all over the place; in
addition to blue filters and blue lighting, any number of prominent
objects are blue - a foil balloon, a tinted window, awnings, a
folder, the walls of a room, coats, skirts, scarves, blouses, jeans,
shirts, trash bags, crystals, a lollypop and its wrapper, binders,
graffiti, a pool, a van, and a pen.
Blue,
supposedly standing for Liberty. Does this help? Well, for sure, it
can get you thinking, trying to make connections. You could say that
this woman is on a campaign to be completely independent (at liberty,
I suppose) with nothing to tie her down, and no alliances which might
become entangling. She says at one point, “Now I have only one
thing left to do: nothing. I don't want any belongings, any memories.
No friends, no love. Those are all traps.”
Is
this a cautionary tale? Liberty being taken to a ridiculous extreme?
What precisely is the film trying to say? If one takes this as being
an example of “liberty” then what about it’s unity
with another part of the flag, the red, “fraternity” (or
“brotherhood”)? This woman is about as opposite to
“fraternal” as you can get! In fact, she’s
basically an extremely unsympathetic and unpalatable character, cold,
and selfish.
So
the blue, white, and red of the French flag, and Liberté,
égalité, fraternité, may seem like a help,
our window to a grand scheme, but is it really? I rather think it
only seems to be a help, on first glance, but really isn’t. If
it’s purpose is just to get you to think about it, it certainly
succeeds. Maybe something along the line of, “You can’t
have all three!” Not at the same time.
Juliette
Binoche, in what amounts to a one-woman show, turns in a mesmerizing
and accomplished performance. She manages to bring an element of
humanity and sympathy to a basically unsympathetic character –
there is little in Julie, as written, for the audience to latch onto,
but Ms. Binoche provides the emotional link to the story.
Blue
is a powerful motion picture - both in terms of its dramatic impact
and in its method of presentation, and it is an adventure to be
prized highly.
At Film Space on
December 13, 7 pm: Trois
Couleurs: Blanc / Three Colors: White
(1994)
by Krzysztof Kieslowski –
91 mins – France, Drama. In Polish and French with English
subtitles. Generally favorable reviews: 77 out of 100.
With
Zbigniew Zamachowski, Julie Delpy, Janusz Gajos, Jerzy Stuhr,
Aleksander Bardini, Grzegorz Warchol.
“This
is the second of the "Three Colors" trilogy Red,
White, and Blue: the colors symbolizing liberty,
equality, and fraternity. White, therefore, was written around
the destructive dynamics of a relationship based upon great
inequality. Karol is a Polish hairdresser working in France. He has a
beautiful wife, Dominique, whom he loves to obsession, and who is in
the process of divorcing him for his inability to "consummate
the marriage.” Karol loses all of his earthly possessions and
is literally driven out of France by his estranged wife. Karol
decides to fight back...”
–
Alliance
Française description
White
is perhaps the craziest of the three: Kieslowski moves quickly and
fluidly through a careening narrative that encompasses love lost and
regained, death and rebirth, France and Poland, abject poverty and
capitalist triumph. All in 90 vivid minutes. It’s actually a
comedy, though it might take a second viewing to convince you of
that. A black comedy. Which I suppose is why it’s
called White, Kieslowski being Kieslowski!
There’s
an interesting film clip of an interview with the film’s female
star Julie Delpy discussing and dissecting the ending of White,
where her character uses sign language to communicate with her
ex-husband. There seems to have been some disagreement about what her
signs were meant to convey, and here she explains it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gqYoVAErLQ.
Interestingly
enough, this whole scene seems to have been an afterthought, and she
was called back to film this additional scene in the middle of the
shooting final film in the series, Red.
Doug
Cummings, Senses of Cinema: White is a return to the
dark humor and irony reminiscent of Decalogue: Ten with its
story of Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), an impotent Polish man whose
French wife, Dominique (Julie Delpy), divorces him. This sets in
motion Karol's elaborate plot to regain equality in their
relationship, though the scheme he hatches verges on revenge and thus
ensures a tragic combination of love and separation. (Quoting a
Polish proverb, Kieslowski remarked, “There are those who are
equal and those who are more equal,” suggesting equality is a
fleeting and imperfect ideal.) However, the film suffers in
comparison to Blue and Red—the cool machinations
of its protagonist (as well as its storytelling) often seem
manipulative and superficial, but Kieslowski's pessimistic wit shines
throughout.
Cinemathequeontario:
“A continuing testament to the Polish director’s
poetic mastery. . . . articulates a whole language of sensations,
images, ironies, and mystery” (Desson Howe, The Washington
Post). In this somewhat anomalous second film in the Trois
Couleurs trilogy, an impotent, penniless hairdresser claws his
way back to the top after rejection by his wife (Julie Delpy) leaves
him shattered. Blanc shies away from the explicit treatment of
existential themes found in Rouge, and the introductory
collapse of its whimsically pathetic protagonist is a far cry from
Bleu’s majestically grieving Binoche. But with oddly
compelling, sometimes comical verve, Blanc offers a haunting
tale of love and possession in which the hairdresser’s
elaborately planned vengeance is depicted as an ambiguous triumph.
Winner of the Silver Bear at the 1994 Berlin film festival.
Saturday, December 20:
Trois
Couleurs: Rouge / Three Colors: Red (1994)
by Krzysztof Kieslowski –
99 mins – France, Drama. English subtitles. Reviews: Universal
acclaim: 84 out of 100.
With
Irène Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Frédérique
Feder, Jean-Pierre Lorit, Samuel Le Bihan, Marion Stalens.
“Third
and last part of Kieslowski's trilogy . . . Valentine is a young
model living in Geneva. Because of a dog she ran over, she meets a
retired judge who spies his neighbors' phone calls, not for money but
to feed his cynicism…”
–
Alliance
Française description
James
Berardinelli, Reel Views: "Blue, liberty; White,
equality; Red, fraternity... We looked very closely at these three
ideas, how they functioned in everyday life, but from an individual's
point of view. These ideals are contradictory with human nature. When
you deal with them practically, you do not know how to live with
them. Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity?"
-
Writer/director Krzysztof Kieslowski
Red,
the final chapter of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors
trilogy, is a subtle masterpiece. With its satisfying exploration of
such complex and diverse themes as destiny and platonic love, Red
is not only a self-contained motion picture, but a fitting conclusion
to the series. Through one brief-but-important scene, this movie adds
closure to both Blue and White, tying both to each
other and to Red, and thereby reinforcing the commonality of
ideas threaded through all three.
This
time around, the protagonists are a young woman named Valentine
(Irene Jacob, who starred in Kieslowski's The Double Life of
Veronique) and a crotchety retired judge, Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis
Trintignant). Valentine, a fashion model, meets the judge after
running down his dog in the street and taking the injured animal to
the address listed on the collar. Kern is initially indifferent to
his pet's predicament, telling Valentine to keep the dog if that's
what she wants. She does; however, the animal eventually runs away
and finds its way back to the judge's. When Valentine goes searching,
she inadvertently learns Kern's secret - he enjoys spying on people
by illegally tapping into their phone conversations. Told in parallel
with the chronicle of the unusual friendship between Valentine and
the judge is the story of two lovers that Kern spies upon. Auguste
and Karin seem devoted to each other, but fate has already cast its
die against them. For Auguste's life is eerily similar to that of
Kern thirty years ago and, like the older man, he is drawn by forces
beyond his control towards Valentine.
Thematically,
Red is the strongest of the three films. Its construction
allows hardly a moment to pass when the viewer isn't considering how
fate manipulates the lives of Valentine, Auguste, Kern, and Karin -
not to mention the characters from Blue and White
(reprised oh-so-briefly by Juliette Binoche, Benoit Regent, Zbigniew
Zamachowski, and Julie Delpy). Then there's the meaning of platonic
love (or "fraternity") - friendship completely divorced
from sexual overtones. Kieslowski shows exactly how multi-faceted any
relationship can be, and what occasionally must be sacrificed to the
basic human need of finding a kindred spirit.
Red
also toys with foreshadowing in a very literal sense. A shot of
Valentine used for a billboard ad presages something that later
happens to her in real life. It is this moment, more than any other,
which crystallizes everything that the Three Colors trilogy is
attempting to convey about life and destiny. While Red lacks
the emotional depth of Blue and the dark humor of White,
it more than makes up for these with its textual and stylistic
richness. The red-saturated visuals by Polish cinematographer Piotr
Sobocinski are crisp and consistently atmospheric, and the score by
Zbigniew Preisner is at full power (after being shunted into the
background in White).
The
performances are without flaw. Irene Jacob is mesmerizing as
Valentine, a woman unknowingly trapped in fate's web. As is true of
the other female leads in the Three Colors trilogy, her acting
ability matches her screen luminance. Jean-Louis Trintignant presents
a multi-layered character whose final secrets are not revealed until
late in the film.
Red
virtually demands more than one viewing for an appreciation of the
picture's ambitious scope. Repeated examination of Red's
narrative and thematic structure makes it apparent what Kieslowski
has accomplished not only here, but through his entire trilogy. This
is one of 1994's exceptional motion pictures.
Roger
Ebert: One of the opening images in Red is of
telephone lines, crossing. It is the same in life. We are connected
with some people and never meet others, but it could easily have
happened otherwise.
Looking
back over a lifetime, we describe what happened as if it had a plan.
To fully understand how accidental and random life is - how vast the
odds are against any single event taking place - would be humbling.
That
is the truth that Kieslowski keeps returning to in his work. In The
Double Life of Veronique, there is even a moment when, if the
heroine had looked out of a bus window, she might have seen herself
on the street; it's as if fate allowed her to continue on one
lifeline after choosing another. In Red, none of the major
characters knows each other at the beginning of the movie, and there
is no reason they should meet. Exactly.
The
film opens in Geneva, in an apartment occupied by a model named
Valentine (Irene Jacob). She makes a telephone call, and the phone
rings at the same time in an apartment just across the street,
occupied by Auguste, a law student. But she is not calling him. Her
call is to her boyfriend, who is in England, and whom she rarely
sees. As far as we know, Valentine and Auguste have never met. And
may never meet. Or perhaps they will.
One
day Valentine's car strikes a dog, and she takes it to the home of
its owner, a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant). He hardly seems
to care for the dog, or for her. He spends his days in an elaborate
spying scheme, using wiretaps to monitor an affair being carried on
by a neighbor. There is an instant spark that strikes between the old
man and the young woman - a contact, a recognition of similarity, or
sympathy - but they are 40 years apart in age, strangers to one
another, and have met by accident, and . . .
The
story becomes completely fascinating. We have no idea where it is
going, where it could possibly go. There is no plot to reassure us.
No goal that the characters hope to attain. Will the young woman and
the judge ever meet again? What will come of that? Does it matter?
Would it be good, or bad? Such questions, in Red, become
infinitely more interesting than the questions in simple-minded
commercial movies, about whether the hero will kill the bad guys, and
drive his car fast, and blow things up, or whether his girlfriend
will take off her clothes.
Seeing
a movie like Red, we are reminded that watching many
commercial films is the cinematic equivalent of reading Dick and
Jane. The mysteries of everyday life are so much deeper and more
exciting than the contrivances of plots.
We
learn something about Auguste, the law student who lives across the
way. He has a girlfriend named Karin. She specializes in "personal
weather reports" for her clients, which sounds reasonable, like
having a personal trainer or astrologer, until we reflect that the
weather is more or less the same for everybody. But perhaps her
clients live in such tight boxes of their own construction that each
one has different weather.
Valentine
talks to her boyfriend. They are rarely together. He is someone on
the phone. Perhaps she "stays" with him to save herself the
trouble of a lover whose life she would actually share.
She
goes back out to the house of the old judge, and talks to him some
more. We learn more about the lives he is eavesdropping on. There are
melodramatic developments, but no one seems to feel strongly about
them.
And
Valentine and Auguste. What a good couple they would make! Perhaps.
If they ever meet. And if, in the endless reaches of cosmic time,
there had been the smallest shift in the lifetimes of Valentine and
the Judge, they could have been the same age. Or another
infinitesimal shift, and they would have lived a century apart. Or
never lived at all. Or if the dog had wandered somewhere else,
Valentine would not have struck him, and met the judge. Or if the
judge had had a cat . . .
Think
about these things, reader. Don't sigh and turn the page. Think that
I have written them and you have read them, and the odds against
either of us ever having existed are greater by far than one to all
of the atoms in creation.
Red
is the conclusion of Kieslowski's masterful trilogy, after Blue
and White, named for the colors in the French flag. He says he
will retire now, at 53, and make no more films. At the end of Red,
the major characters from all three films meet - through a
coincidence, naturally. This is the kind of film that makes you feel
intensely alive while you're watching it, and sends you out into the
streets afterwards eager to talk deeply and urgently, to the person
you are with. Whoever that happens to be.
About the director:
"Live
carefully, with your eyes open, and try not to cause pain."
Krzysztof
Kieslowski (b. June 27, 1941 in Warsaw, Poland – d. March
13, 1996) was a leading director of documentaries, television and
feature films from the 1970s to the 1990s. The social and moral
themes of contemporary times became the focus of his many significant
films and his unique humanist treatment of those themes secured his
place as one of the greatest of modern film directors. He was a
prominent member of the Polish film generation who defined the
so-called "Cinema of Moral Anxiety" - films which tested
the limits of Socialist film censorship by drawing sharp contrasts
between the individual and the state.
Kieslowski
graduated from the Lodz Film School in 1968 and began his film career
making documentaries that were both artistic and political and aimed
to awaken social consciousness. Workers
'71
attempted to relate the workers' state of mind as they organized
strikes. The people's desire for more radical change was addressed in
Talking
Heads.
In 1973, social and political commentary infused The
Bricklayer,
the story of a political activist who becomes disenchanted with the
hierarchy surrounding Party politics, and returns to bricklaying.
Kieslowski's documentary Hospital
(1976) is both homage to the hardworking surgeons in a Polish
hospital, and a revealing look at the problems with health care in
Poland.
His
early feature films were made for television; they include Personnel
and Calm.
Because his feature films evolved from the documentaries, he
continued to use documentary techniques to enhance and add realism to
the fiction films. The
Scar
(1976) was Kieslowski's first theatrical release, a socio-realist
view of management problems in a large industrial factory. He came to
festival attention with Camera
Buff
(1979), a parody on the film industry, an exploration of the unknown
and a wry commentary on censorship. Blind
Chance,
a 1981 feature film, concentrates on what role fate or chance plays
in our futures.
In
1984, he began a longtime writing collaboration with Polish lawyer,
Krzysztof Piesiewicz with No
End.
Set during Poland's martial law of 1982, it is the story of a dead
lawyer who watches over his family as they continue on with their
lives. His wife becomes involved in his last case involving a worker
who had been arrested when he tried to organize a strike.
Kieslowski's
mammoth Decalogue,
co-written with Piesiewicz, is a series made for Polish television
based on the Ten Commandments. Each episode is set in a contemporary
apartment complex in Warsaw and is one hour long. Kieslowski tackled
the project after feeling "tension, a feeling of hopelessness,
and a fear of worse yet to come - everywhere, everything, practically
everybody's life." The series was shown in its entirety as the
centerpiece of the 1989 Venice Film Festival and is considered a
masterpiece of modern cinema.
Lack
of funds in Poland drove Kieslowski to seek financial backing from
the West - most notably in France. The
Double Life of Veronique
(1992) firmly established Kieslowski with an international
reputation. This moody, atmospheric study of two women,
doppelgangers, one French, one Polish, who share the same name,
birthday, heart condition, and a vague sense of the existence of the
other, was a commercial as well as critical success and made a star
of its leading actress, Irene Jacob.
The
Three Colors trilogy, representing the colors of the French
flag, Blue
(1993, liberty), White
(1994, equality) and Red
(1994, fraternity) followed. The trilogy explores these three themes;
in Blue,
Juliette Binoche grieves as she loses her husband and child in a car
accident and her new life and freedom cannot replace lost love. In
White,
a Polish hairdresser tries to regain the love of his ex-wife, a
beautiful French girl played by Julie Delpy, and seeks equality in
their one-sided relationship. In Red,
Irene Jacob is a model who gradually falls in love with an older man
(played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) after she accidentally [hits] his
dog in a traffic accident. The retired judge arranges for her to
"accidentally" meet someone her own age and for whom he
thinks will be good for her. The films were scheduled to be released
three months apart and while each can stand on its own; they were
designed to be seen as a single entity.
Kieslowski
periodically announced his retirement from filmmaking, though he
never actually abandoned the cinema completely. His last project was
to coauthor another trilogy with Piesiewicz, with the films
tentatively titled Heaven,
Hell,
and Purgatory.
Kieslowski died before the trilogy was completed. A chain smoker, the
great director died following cardiac surgery at the age of 54.
Heaven,
the first in the trilogy, was completed in 2002 with Tom Tykwer at
the helm and Cate Blanchett in the starring role.
– Facets.org
