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Friday, October 22, 2004
blue & white
in the 1990s, polish director krzysztof kieslowski directed a series of three interrelated movies titled "blue" (1993), "white" (1994) and "red" (1994), collectively known as the "three colors" trilogy. thanks to my friend, i've seen two of them already - blue & white. "blue" is set in paris while "white" in warsaw & mostly in polish (my father's native language). kieslowski (who died in 1996 at the age of 54, not long after having completed these 3 films) cleverly named the trilogy after the 3 colors in the french flag. he used blue, white, & red to give him the predominant color & mood for each film. the trilogy itself deals with the ideals supported by the french revolution - liberty, equality & fraternity.. and how these relate to modern relationship. the three colors trilogy is not a standard plot-driven film, but instead goes much deeper. it is a film with multiple levels of meaning & it keeps growing on u the more u watch it & the more u analyze it.
"blue"
 blue's theme is liberty. it speaks especially about human loss and survival and true liberty. the story begins with a car crash that badly injures a 33-year-old woman & kills her husband together with their five-year-old daughter. the woman, whose name is july (juliette binoche), recovers physically & she must decide how to deal with her grief, most particularly for her daughter, & get on with her life. although she had not sought freedom, it has come to her, & she must make some difficult choices.
julie's husband was a famous composer who was working on much-awaited corcerto (the "song for the unification of europe" - intended to be played as a once-only concerto simultaneously by 12 separate orchestras around europe, as a symbol of its unification) at the time of his death & the unfinished piece of music haunts her. julie also discovers that her late husband had a mistress for years. on the other hand, julie's husband assistant, olivier, has been in love with her for a long time, & she must decide whether she is ready to risk emotional intimacy.
julie attempts to start a new life free of personal commitments, belongings, grief and love. she shies away from human contact & seeks to cut off all ties to her former life & the pain that it brings. she does this by selling up the entire family estate and disposes all her husband's music scores in an attempt to kill his musical legacy. she intends to spiritually commit suicide by withdrawing from the world & living anonymously in small flat in paris in a quiet, simple & lonely existence. she swims regularly to free herself of thoughts of the past life or to cleanse her emotions of guilt. it shows how grief can turn a loving person into an emotionless recluse. although she seeks strength, it's really self-destructive. despite her intentions, people from her former & present life intrude with their own needs & she finds herself once again interacting with people & getting caught up in the lives of others.
during her search for the liberty, julie learns valuable lessons from the different people she meets. she visits her institutionalized mother, who suffers from alzheimer. her mother is a representative of the extreme of liberty that julie seeks. because of her condition, she cannot recognize julie as her daughter. her mother spends her day in a hollow existence, 'seeing the world' through her television -- an illusion of freedom. she is free to see the world, but unable to interact with the images on the screen due to the lack of emotional connection with the events around her.
the writer wanted to show what liberty means to us today, who already posses liberty. liberty means individual liberty, the liberty of life itself. the film questions the value of liberty & conveying that complete freedom may be impossible to attain. in the end, julie re-establishes the connections with her past. she shifts from a state of liberty into a state of union. she gives the family's home & name to his husband's lover unborn child & completes the composition of his husband's music. she also allows herself to love & be loved by olivier. i'm into the art of film-making. i always appreciate visual techniques, which makes the film so stylish, in this film such as multiple reflections & macro close-ups. a few examples: have a look at the scene of the doctor informing julie of her husband & daughter's death: all shot as an extreme close-up reflection in julie's eyes... or the close-up of the sugar-cube slowly absorbing the coffee and then turning to coffee's colour (symbolising julie's ignorance of everything else around her, where the significance of even minor events is heightened by the introspecting mind... another example would be the scene where the old woman's attempt to put a bottle in a recycling bin is virtually ignored by julie as she is in one of her introspective trances)... or the macro close-up of the music sheets, or the triple reflection of the image of julie's mother, in the tv screen in the window of the nursing home. the director clearly wants the viewer to understand what is going on inside julie by observing her face in close-up. what an exquisite face binoche has!
"white" it's theme is equality. a hairdresser from poland, karol (it's also my uncle's name) marries a beautiful french woman named dominique & relocates to paris, where everything is structured in her favor. the movie opens in a paris courtroom because dominique wants to divorce him for failing to consumate the marriage... he is impotent. she testifies that she no longer loves him. perhaps it is due to his anxiety at living in a strange & hostile city where he doesn't belong & in which he can't even speak the language. it is not clear what the problem is, other than this is perhaps temporary one for karol. nonetheless, dominique is certainly not content to wait around for him at all. she cruelly humiliates him in the court, takes his passport & all of his possessions & then finally throws him out on the harsh street of paris. on the other hand the scene of the wedding day keeps replaying in karol's mind where dominique is innocent, dressed in white & smiling. she takes on almost goddess proportion in karol's mind. karol finds himself destitute, with no access to any money & with his sole possession being a suitcase containing his polish hairdressing diplomas & a porcelain statue he steals from a store (the statue being a pathetic reminder of his pre-paris dominique). but to top it all off, dominique then takes a great pleasure in taunting him over the phone with the sounds of her lovemaking with her new lover! *ouch!* surely life for our poor karol is at its rock-bottom. there is clearly no equality for this man. in the first half of the movie, karol is a complete innocent who is treated unjustly. as he plays polish folk songs in paris metro, he catches the attention of mikolaj, a polish bridge player. mikolaj offers to help get karol out of paris & take him back to his home city of warsaw in the suitcase. but alas, the suitcase itself is stolen by thieves! of course, they try to rob him, but he has nothing worth stealing so they beat him. despite rough treatment, we see karol pleased to just be alive & back in his snowy home city & cries out loudly : "jesus, i'm home at last!" the second half of the movie follows karol's plan to regain his equality with dominique. still hopelessly devoted to her, even despite what she's done to him, he feels compelled to win back her love & respect. in warsaw karol gets involved with some capitalists, & he gradually becomes very wealthy. he then fakes his own death & leaves his fortune to dominique, who comes to warsaw for the funeral. he uses his newfound wealth & power to reignite dominique's interest in him, then sees her for one last time & make love with her (karol suddenly regained his sexual powers). however, as the morning rise, karol is gone & dominique falls into his trap as karol makes it appear as though his ex-wife has murdered him for his money. the film is actually a black comedy. it deals with its theme -equality- in an ironic fashion. it is an excellent character study. *beware, a man scorned can be just as dangerous as a woman scorned* the ending is rather ambiguous, though (although i'm belong to eruopean audiences type who don't mind being left to draw their own conclusions in certain situations). karol finally gets his revenge alright, but does he gain his equality? well no, not really, as dominique is left in prison & he is on the outside. but the stage now is set for them to be in a relationship in which they will be equals. when karol goes to the jail where dominique is being held, through the windos, dominique uses sign language to tell karol that she still loves him & is willing to marry him again, if she can get out of prison. karol begins to cry, realizing that he too still loves her.
stelly @ 8:08 AM
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