Interconnectivity

Film: La Double Vie de Veronique (The Double Life of Veronique)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Krzysztof Kieslowski may well be the most spiritual of directors I have ever encountered. All of his work, at least all of his work that I’ve seen, is imbued with a a spiritual quality that comes across as genuine, simple, and beautiful because it isn’t forced. It’s honest and, for lack of a better word, pure. This is definitely true of Dekalog and of the Three Colors films. It’s also almost immediately evident in La Double Vie de Veronique (The Double Life of Veronique). This is a film of simple beauty and pleasure, and sadness.

We spend the initial part of the film with Weronika (Irene Jacob), a singer in Krakow. She attends a rehearsal for a men’s choir and, unable to control herself, accompanies them, which draws the attention of the choir director, who asks her to audition. When she leaves, she walks out into the middle of a demonstration that is becoming violent. Across a plaza, she sees a tourist board a bus; the tourist looks exactly like her.

Same Colors, Different Flag

Films: Trois Couleurs: Bleu (Three Colors: Blue, Blue); Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Three Colors: Red, Red)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library (Blue); DVD from Sycamore Public Library through interlibrary loan (Red), both on kick-ass portable DVD player.

If you had asked me a year ago what I knew about Krzysztof Kieslowski, I’d have said that he had at least one too many “z’s” in his first name and I’d have been done at that. Ask me that same question now, and I’ll tell you that he’s a director that more people should know about and that his use of camera, light, and color is some of the best in cinematic history. After watching all of Dekalog last year and being suitably impressed by it, I was excited to take another spin through Kieslowski’s world with two-thirds of his “Three Colors” trilogy.

The concept behind the trilogy is an interesting one. Using the three colors of the French flag (blue, white, and red from left to right) and the three words of the French revolution (liberte (liberty), egalite (equality), fraternite (brotherhood), Kieslowski made three films, two of which appear on the 1001 Movies list. These are Trois Couleurs: Bleu (Three Colors: Blue, or more commonly Blue), the first of the trilogy and Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Three Colors: Red, or Red to its friends), the third.


Blue starts in a way that I find disturbing. A family of three are driving happily down a road when the car goes out of control, hits a tree, and kills both the father and the daughter. Julie (Juliette Binoche) survives the crash, but attempts suicide in the hospital when she realizes her family is gone. Unable to go through with it (she can’t swallow the pills), she decides to take apart her life and not start over, but drop out completely.

This becomes impossible right from the start, though. Her husband was a well-known composer and was working on a symphony to celebrate the European Union. The work was unfinished, and a friend and musician named Olivier (Benoit Regent) wants to finish the score. Julie won’t let him. She takes the work from her husband’s conservatory and destroys it completely. She also removes all of her and her family’s belongings from the large house, closes it up, deeds all of her husband’s money to take care of her own mother, and moves to Paris.

In Paris, Julie attempts to cloister herself from humanity completely. She reverts to her maiden name and tells no one where she is. Even in this situation she is unable to completely avoid being a part of the world, though. She becomes involved in the affairs of one of her neighbors (Charlotte Very), a sex performer who the other building tenants attempt to oust because of her job. She also discovers that Olivier has another copy of her husband’s last score and is attempting to complete it. More significantly, she discovers that her husband had a mistress named Sandrine (Florence Pernel), and that the woman is pregnant with his child.

As the title of the film implies, this movie is awash in tones of blue. The one thing Julie saves is her daughter’s lamp of blue beads. She also swims frequently in a pool suffused in blue light. The film is equally suffused with her husband’s unfinished symphony, a piece of surprising strength and beauty, particularly as it jumps out in places when Julie is confronted by a piece of her past. Over and over she is reminded that while she may have her freedom, there are always things that tie her to who she was and who she will become.

The story of Blue is engaging as are the characters, but it is not this that causes me to recommend the film. What does is the almost surreal moments of the film when Julie realizes that she has not gotten completely rid of her old life and finds it intruding on her once again. These are regularly accompanied by the sudden orchestral hit of the unfinished symphony and most of the time by a suddenly black screen as if she herself is blacking out for a moment. The first of these, however, sees her suddenly lit by an intense blue light. The moment is a startling one, and extremely powerful. I’m man enough to admit that Julie’s sudden shock accompanied by almost painful blue light and the driving symphonic score literally made me gasp and sent a full-on chill down my back, even when watching on a little 8” screen. I went back to that scene several times after I finished the film, and it had the same effect on me each time.

There’s real magic in something that can elicit that powerful of an emotional and physical reaction time after time, even when it’s expected. Trois Couleurs: Bleu is demanding and powerful, and not to be missed.


The completion of the “Three Colors” trilogy and Kieslowski’s last film is Red. Like Blue, this film’s dominant color scheme is the color of its title. Here, it appears everywhere—in furniture, on billboards, as the colors of food and cars and clothing. Just as we have moved along the flag in terms of colors, we have also moved along the French motto in terms of theme. Here, rather than liberty, the dominant message is one of fraternity.

Our heroine is Valentine (Irene Jacob), a part-time model and student in Geneva. Her boyfriend Michel, who appears only as a voice on the telephone, is in England and calls her frequently as if keeping tabs on her. It’s evident early on that Michel is either wildly jealous or incredibly insecure, or possibly both. He suspects her constantly of infidelity, assuming that if she isn’t at home and answering the phone when he calls that she is off with another man.

Valentine appears as the focus of a gum advertisement that appears in the middle of the film and also walks on a catwalk at a fashion show. While driving home, she hits a German shepherd and drives it to its owner, a reclusive former judge named Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant). He seems uninterested in the dog and tells her that now it’s her dog. She takes the dog to the vet to discover that it will be fine and that it’s pregnant.

The dog causes her to take a certain interest in the judge, but this interest turns to disgust when she finds that the judge is in the habit of listening in to the phone conversations of his neighbors with a huge surveillance set. Almost as Michel is doing to her, the judge is doing to the neighbors. He knows all of their secrets, knows who is having an affair with whom, but he also refuses to act on the vast amount of knowledge he has.

While all of this is going on, we discover another story tied up in this one. Auguste (Jean-Pierre Lorit) is a law student having a romantic fling with Karin (Frederique Feder). According to the judge, she isn’t the right woman for him, though, and the affair will soon be over. His prediction proves true. He admits his surveillance to the neighbors and they press a case against him. In the course of the case, Karin meets another man, and Auguste catches them in flagrante.

It’s not until the very end that Valentine and Auguste meet despite a number of near misses (shades of Chungking Express from the same year), which is another dominant idea in the film—this idea of connection and missed connection to couple with the theme of brotherhood.

The ending, though, is beyond my ken. I’m not sure I understand exactly why the event that happens does, except that it serves as a way to not only get these two characters to finally stand in the same shot, but also to connect this film to the previous two of the trilogy. One nice touch is that our final shot of the film, of Valentine, is an almost exact duplicate of the shot we see of her throughout the film: the billboard for the gum.

Red may well be a better movie than Blue, but I liked Blue better. As a final comment, one aspect of both films that is absolutely worth paying attention to is the beautiful and butter-smooth camera work. Piotr Sobocinski earns as much of the credit for the overall look of these films as Kieslowski, and much of the power of them comes from his beautiful camera movements and shots.

Why to watch Trois Couleurs: Bleu: Startlingly beautiful.
Why not to watch: It’s over too soon.

Why to watch Trois Couleurs: Red: A new and interesting take on voyeurism.
Why not to watch: A strange resolution that sums up more than it needs to.

I Can Count to Ten

Film: Dekalog (The Decalogue)
Format: DVDs from NetFlix on laptop.


The word “masterpiece” gets bandied about frequently when speaking of any artistic endeavor. I’ve certainly used it more than my share of times on this blog in the past eight or so months. And yet, when a true masterpiece is encountered, it is undeniable. There isn’t another word for it. When Stanley Kubrick was asked to name a masterpiece created within his lifetime, he could name only one: Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog.

This is not a film. Instead, it is a series of ten films are loosely on the Biblical Ten Commandments, or at least a version of them. It was interesting to me that there are different versions, or that they are at least broken down differently. The version I learned way back when, for instance, considered coveting as a single commandment, while the version here considers coveting a neighbor’s wife as the ninth, and a neighbor’s goods as the tenth. Regardless, the sentiments are the same despite differences in division.

Each of the ten films deals at least in a vague way with a single commandment, although the division isn’t perfectly clean. While one edict may be the main part of the story, elements of other commandments creep in and help drive each plot forward. The connection between the stories, other than the obvious Biblical references, is that all of the take place in the same block of apartments in Warsaw, each film is just shy of an hour long, and a young, unnamed man appears in the background of all but the final film. They are also all very slow to develop, with the true direction of the film often not being revealed until mid-way through. Sometimes, situations from one story or related people will crop up. The story of the second film is referenced in the eighth, for instance. The tenth film concerns the sons of a minor character in the eighth.

Because of the subject matter here, each of these stories pivots around ethical dilemmas, where people are forced into making terrible, difficult choices or are forced to deal with the consequences of decisions they have made. The main characters are placed into situations where a particular sin becomes a temptation, or even a necessity, with all that this entails.

What strikes me here is the inventiveness of some of these stories. Coming up with an hour-long drama dealing with infidelity or murder, for instance, would be easy. But how does one make a drama out of a false idol or keeping the Sabbath holy? Kieslowski, who co-wrote as well as directed these films, creates moving, beautiful stories to answer these questions, and does not stop there. The tales concerning the relatively “easy” commandments of adultery, killing, and covetousness are handled with the same level of inventiveness and style. In going deeper into each of the commandments, Kieslowski brings up and deals with complex moral issues.

For instance, in the fifth film, the topic is murder. A young man named Jacek kills a cab driver seemingly at random. The death is a terrible, brutal affair that lasts far longer than it should, either because Jacek cannot deal with his actions or because he is torturing the driver. Regardless, Jacek is caught, convicted, and sentenced to death. His attorney attempts to argue against the death penalty to no avail, and Jacek is killed, almost as terribly and brutally as the cab driver. So if killing is proscribed and Jacek a terrible human being for committing murder, why is it that we allow the state to commit the same act? How are the actions of his executioners any different from his own? Certainly this is an argument that could go around and around, but the fact that the film addresses that argument is a great thing. It’s a perfectly legitimate question, and one that the film asks, but leaves the viewer to answer.

The second film tells of a man lying in a coma. His wife continually pesters the doctor as to whether or not her husband will live. Eventually, we discover that she is pregnant by a man other than her husband. If he is going to die, she will have the baby, because she wants the baby. However, she also loves her husband, and if he is going to live, she will have an abortion. Does the doctor have the right to determine the fact of the man or the child? Does he have the right to place himself in a position before God?

The book upon which this blog is based mentions only the first of these films—Jeden—as the one to watch. I cannot agree. All of these films are beautifully done, and each is different from the next. Kieslowski, in an effort to make each film its own entity, worked with ten different cinematographers. As a matter of fact, I don’t think Jeden is the best of these films. Each has its merits, and each is worth not just watching, but pondering over. While Jeden may not be my favorite, I don’t think I can pick one I liked the best. Of them all, I think Dziesiec (10) was the most difficult to watch, although that may simply have been from my being so close to the end.

I’ve watched Dekalog over the course of the last several weeks, and I think this is the best way to watch it. The films bring up enough material that watching them straight through would quickly become overwhelming. Dekalog requires time to mull over each film and each of the moral and ethical problems posed. Don’t watch just the first one—you’re only robbing yourself if you do. Watch them all, and take your time with them. Give each one the space and thought it deserves, and you will find yourself amply rewarded.

There neither space nor time to discuss each of these films in depth, although each film is rich enough to deserve such treatment. In the interest of completeness, though, here is the story of each one (numbered as in the Polish) as well as the main commandment it concerns parenthetically:

Jeden (false idols): A young boy lives with his father, who has essentially lost his faith. Instead, the father trusts almost exclusively in his computer. The computer here is a false god, an idol given complete deference by the father, who believes in it completely.

Dwa (no other god): As mentioned above, the wife of a comatose patient is pregnant by another man. Should the doctor claim the power of God and pronounce the man dead, or should he risk the woman having an abortion against his own beliefs?

Trzy (keeping the Sabbath holy): A cab driver wishes to spend Christmas Eve (a holy day) with his family. Instead, he is contacted by a woman he once had an affair with. She claims she cannot locate her husband and begs for help. Should he keep this day sacred, or help someone who needs it?

Cztery (honoring father and mother): A young woman lives with her father, her mother having died days after giving birth. She finds a letter from her mother that tells her that the man she thought was her father is not. The film concerns how she reacts to this news and the relationship with the man who raised her.

Piec (no killing): As discussed above—the murder of a cab driver and the state sponsored execution of his killer. Why does the state have rights that the individual does not?

Szesc (no adultery): A man spies on a promiscuous woman through his apartment window. He is obsessed with her, and manufactures reasons to see her. He finally admits this to her, and she destroys his notions of romance, causing him to attempt suicide. Possibly my favorite of the ten (pictured above).

Siedem (no stealing): A girl is raised by her grandmother, not realizing that her “sister” is actually her mother. The girl’s actual mother kidnaps the girl and attempts to run away with her, stealing the girl in the way she envisions that her mother stole the girl from her.

Osiem (no false witness): An ethics professor is confronted by a translator who knew her in the past. The translator is a Jewish survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. The professor (of ethics, no less) is the woman who denied the translator asylum after having promised it, claiming that to do so would be to bear false witness, and that it conflicted with her beliefs. Another contender for my favorite.

Dziewiec (no coveting of spouses): A doctor discovers that he is permanently impotent. He suggests to his wife that she take a lover, and then finds himself obsessed and insanely jealous of the situation, in effect coveting his own wife.

Dziesiec (no coveting of goods): Two brothers inherit an incredibly valuable stamp collection from their father, and find that it is far more trouble than it is worth.

The word “masterpiece” is overused, but here it applies. Kieslowski’s series of films is a staggering achievement, and it is relatively unknown in this country only because of its origins as a Polish television series. That’s a shame. More people should watch this. You should be one of them. Yes, you.

Why to watch Dekalog: Intelligent moral questions without preaching.
Why not to watch: Locating it isn’t easy, and people will ask you why you are watching Polish television.