Review #25

Three Colours Trilogy - Kryzstof Kieslowski

Having taken the ten biblical commandments as an instigator for his series Dekalogue, Kieslowski took another moral lesson for a trilogy of three feature films. He used the colours of the French flag: Blue (Liberty), White (Equality) and Red (Fraternity).

A native Pole, with no grasp of French, it may be that Kieslowski undertook this project because, after the the fall of communism, it left more room creative freedom. To work with French crews, distributors and settings may have been a welcoming prospect after having worked under the watchful eye of an authoritarian regime. The higher budgets from these production companies, no doubt, was also an enticing prospect.

Far more pressingly, the themes that could be developed out of these moral lessons were limitless. Already using elements of French culture in The Double Life of Veronique, which some say was a way of expounding a political allegory, Kieslowski was given rein to use this foreign culture to develop themes and moving stories.

Kieslowski films depict characters struggling in their daily life with cultural myths. Strongly evident in this trilogy, each protagonist experiences some sort of strife with the moral codes of their community; they ultimately learn to acclimatise themselves to their conflict and find strategies of solving their issues.

Blue is a film that centres itself around emotional, not political, liberty. Julie, played by the beautiful Juliette Binoche, is wife of a renowned composer. The film begins with a car crash where she is the sole survivor, surviving her husband and five-year-old daughter. She thereafter cuts herself off from the rest of the world.

The film follows her through her isolation, discovering that her husband had been unfaithful. What fortifies the film is the perennial presence of music: whenever the protagonist closes her eyes to think, there is a fadeout superimposed with lush orchestral music.

Kieslowski said that cinema is inferior to literature because of its incapacity at showing 'the inner life,' but he does find ways of ameliorating this by depicting characters' inner thoughts. Curtailing the explicitly of cinema, he nuances the level of obviousness often prevalent in film. Everything in Blue is centred around the character, so all her surroundings become detached. Kieslowski makes every common triviality - a cup of coffee, a television set, backgrounds - lose importance as she continues to banish the world around her.

The Binoche character eventually comes around to integrating herself into the world again, completing an unfinished symphony of her deceased husband and beginning a relationship with a contact. Her emotional liberty is reciprocated and resumes her activity again.

White is considered the weak link in the trilogy, but if you consider it in its own terms it is an excellent piece of film-making. It follows the misfortunes of a Pole stranded in Paris, who is abandoned by his adored wive, leaving his him as a vagabond. After a whole series of events he becomes a rich entrepreneur after having connivingly acquired an expensive spot of land.

At the time of the film's release there was a sudden explosion in suspicious dealings and investments. For instance, people like Chealsea football club owner Abrahamovich amassed a great fortune because they managed to acquire enterprises cheaply after the dissolution of the communist hierarchy. Kieslowski was clearly unsettled by this and felt the need to comment on it.

Red no doubt features the most benevolent protagonist, played by the beautiful (how many French beauties are there?) Irene Jacob. A student who does modelling for spare cash, she runs over a dog, feels guilty and returns it to its owner. Having sought him, she finds that he is rude and cold to her. This solitary man lives isolated in a small house while monitoring tapped conversations of his neighbours.

This man turns out to have been a former judge, who now seems to be displaced with the world. With the assistance of this kind model, they establish a friendship and he turns himself into the authorities.

A concurrent narrative is of a law student's fraught love relationship. Like in Double Life of Veronique Kieslowski revels in mirroring interconnected lives. This young law student is perhaps a missing link between each other's destinies; that perhaps, had they been born in the same time-frame, they may have had a relationship.

All the films are riddled with symbolism. One recurring theme in each of the film is of an old woman scavenging over to a waste disposal to trash a bottle. In the first two films the characters simply see it from a distance; in Red, as an act of solidarity and fraternity, Jacob helps the elderly woman.

Finally: I am not one to praise, nor even notice, the cinematography of a film, but here it is unavoidable. Each film is tinted with its respective colour, in addition to being accompanied by setting and props of it. Not many directors can be acclaimed for taking content and cinematography in consideration simultaneously, not separately, but Kieslowski is one of them.

An extraordinary trilogy and definitely the most impressive piece of contemporary film-making I have encountered. Strongly recommended.