Three Colours Trilogy (Icon)
The extraordinary career of Polish auteur Kryzysztof Kieslowski ended long before it should have, with his untimely death at the age of 54 in 1996, but he is remembered, and rightly so, for his magnificent and ambitious Three Colours Trilogy.
On the eve of its 20th anniversary, these three films have been re-issued as a digitally remastered triple disc set. Alongside the brilliant The Double Life of Veronique (1991), the trilogy remains Kieslowski’s magnum opus. Made over a period of only two years, each of the films features the director’s characteristically sensual imagery and solid thematic undertones in both the scripts and the visuals that touch upon the perplexing metaphysical allusions that underpin much of his film work.
Just as his 1988 film The Decalogue was based on The Ten Commandments, reinterpreted and examined in a contemporary context and setting, so the Three Colours Trilogy represents Kieslowski’s exploration of modern-day attempts to live by the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Blue, initially released in 1993, revolves around the story of a recently widowed young woman, Julie, who is beautifully portrayed by French actress Juliette Binoche.
Having failed to commit suicide in the wake of a car crash that killed her husband and young daughter, she makes an existential decision to murder the parts of herself, her soul, her memory and her day-to-day life that relate to her past. Though she is left financially secure, Julie ultimately aspires to absolute freedom from any connections or ties whatsoever to everything in a world in which she finds herself struggling to exist, be they emotional, figurative or literal.
As she observes at one point: “Now I have only one thing to do: nothing. I don’t want any belongings, any memories. No friends, no love. Those are all traps.” This, of course, proves near impossible for her to achieve. Despite her desperate, at times almost ferocious, longing to ameliorate her intense grief and suffering by erasing everything that reminds her of her husband and daughter and the life they shared, hers is an utterly unattainable goal: memories and feelings cannot simply be erased and, inevitably, new people enter her life, thus complicating her resolve to live disconnected from not only her painful past but also anybody that might endeavour to infiltrate her present.
Of the three films, it is Blue that packs the greatest emotional punch. The myriad hues of blue that drench the film’s every frame and every shot are extraordinarily powerful in conveying Julie’s sense of depression, dislocation and indescribable suffering. Music is central to the film, not only because Julie’s husband was a composer who left behind an unfinished concerto, but also because Kieslowski masterfully employs it to convey mood and sentiment.
Similarly, Binoche’s fearless performance utterly embodies Julie’s depression and grief, conveying both the irrationality of her resolve to erase her past and exist in a present devoid of any meaningful interactions or connections with others and also the reasons why she longs for such an emotionally empty, unencumbered existence. Kieslowski expertly communicates her anguish, even daring to fade to black at four points, as Julie struggles to surmount her painful memories and fresh grief. There is, he suggests, nothing that can convey such loss and trauma – not music, not colour, not even an expression on Binoche’s pale, emotive face.
To declare Blue the strongest film of the trilogy is not, however, to diminish the prowess or power of either White or Red, both released in 1994. Unlike Blue, which is perhaps best described as an existential drama, White is a mystery-comedy that employs some dramatic tropes, but largely plays with humour in telling the story of Karol Karol, a hairdresser divorced and rendered penniless by his French wife, played by French actress Julie Delpy. He lures her to Poland with false reports of his death and, once there, she is accused of his murder and jailed. It is, in the end, an allegorical tale that relies heavily on use of flashbacks, mostly to the titular white of Karol’s wedding. White is many things: a tale of loss, of murder, of revenge, of one man’s desire to live and yet to haunt the woman who traumatised him.
Red, too, is an engrossing film. At its heart is the notion of fraternity and it is, as such, a film that spins a web of interconnected relationships between disparate characters whose lives are interlinked. Fashion model Valentine, portrayed by Kieslowski’s earlier muse from The Double Life of Veronique, Irene Jacob, runs over a dog and returns the pet to its owner, a retired judge engaged in illicit and wholly inappropriate electronic eavesdropping. He comes across as callow. Unconcerned with the fate of his pet, Valentine decides to keep the dog and it is the tie that binds the men and women who populate the film.
The film makes the same masterful use of colour seen in Blue, though to less spectacular and immediately emotive effect. The film’s plot is complicated and intriguing, but it ends as it begins: with a singular, unforgettable reference to its titular colour, the bright, rich red bleeding into everything as far as the eye can see – cars, the awnings of cafes and restaurants, chairs and clothing. Though Blue, White and Red are indeed separate films, watching them in close succession leaves one with the unmistakable sense that Kieslowski intended them as one long film, inching ever forward toward a deliberate finale and a sly interconnectedness that is as complicated, beautiful, moving, humorous, tender, frustrating and ultimately inscrutable as the individual films themselves.
Heidi Maier.
