The Examination of Doubleness in Three Colours: Blue, White, Red (1)
Maho Hidaka
Abstract
クシシュトフ・キェシロフスキ（一九四二〜一九九六）は、ポーランド出身の映画監督であり、初期には、祖国ポーランドでドキュメンタリー映画の制作に携わった。代表作としては、後期の『デカローグ』シリーズ（一九八八）や、フランスとの合作である長編映画作品『二人のベロニカ』（一九九一）及び『トリコロール：青の愛、白の愛、赤の愛』（一九九三/一九九四）が挙げられる。キェシロフスキの映画を読み解く際、一つの鍵となるものに、分身性という問題が考えられる。キェシロフスキの作品の中で、いわゆる「生き写し」としての分身のモチーフを扱ったものは、『二人のベロニカ』に限られるが、「分身性」という言葉を、様々な側面での二重性の意味を含むものとして捉えた場合、そのテーマが、彼の映画世界の中で、如何に大きな位置を占めるかが見えてくる。
ここでは、特に、『トリコロール：青の愛、白の愛、赤の愛』の三部作を取り上げて、分身性という観点から、個々の作品分析を行うと同時に、三作品の関連性にも言及したい。この三部作は、フランスの三色旗に着想を得て、一九九三年から一九九四年にかけて制作された。三部作とは言え、監督自身が認めているように、互いに独立性の強い作品であり、一作ごとに異なる主人公の人生に焦点を当てながら、フランス革命の理念として掲げられた自由、平等、博愛の精神が、現代の個々人の生活においてどのように機能しているか、という問題を扱っている。
第二章で取り上げられる『青の愛』では、事故で最愛の娘と作曲家の夫を亡くした若き未亡人、ジュリが、過去との繋がりを一切断とうとしながら、逆に、過去に捕らわれていく様子を描くことで、人間は一体どれだけ自由になれるのか、という問題が提示される。この章では、ジュリが、現在の自分と、忘れてしまおうとする過去の自分との二重性を乗り越えて、如何に本来の自分を取り戻し成長していくか、ということが、主たる論点となるが、その他の登場人物に見られる分身性も併せて検討される。また、過去の世界から湧き上がってきては、亡霊のようにジュリに纏わりつく音楽の果たす役割についても考察する。
三部作の第二作目に当たる『白の愛』は第三章で扱われるが、ここでは、平等というテーマが、人はむしろ他人以上になりたいというのが本心ではないか、という監督自身の疑問を通して扱われている。主人公は、ポーランド出身の理髪師、カロルである。映画の冒頭で、性不能を理由に、フランス人の妻、ドミニクに離縁されたカロルは、復讐を決意して、資本主義化した故国ポーランドで一財産を築き上げる。入念に考案された計画の下、多額の遺産を切り札に、自分の葬式すら偽装してドミニクをポーランドまで呼び寄せた彼は、自分が国外脱出すると同時にドミニクが殺人容疑で逮捕されるというところまで取り計らうが、復讐が遂に実現されようという最後の段階に至って、未だにドミニクを愛していたことに気付き、皮肉にも自分の計らいで投獄された彼女を訪ねて行く。最終的に二人が再び結ばれるということは、『赤の愛』の最後で明らかになる。この映画では、主人公カロルは、復讐を決意すると同時に、当初の軟弱な様子をがらりと変えて、てきぱきと雇用人を動かす成金社長へと変貌する。本章では、主として、彼の変貌振りと、事故死を偽装した後の彼の二重生活、そして、愛しいドミニクの身代わりのように逆境から這い上がるカロルを支える若い女性の白い胸像と本物のドミニクとの分身関係が検証される。
第四章で論じられる『赤の愛』は、ジュネーヴを舞台に、モデル兼学生のバレンティンと隠居生活を送る元裁判官ジョーゼフ・ケルンとの間に生まれる友情の発展を中心に展開する。バレンティンは、独占欲が強いばかりでジュネーヴを離れがちな恋人と麻薬中毒の弟に頭を悩ませており、一方、ジョーゼフは、若い頃恋人に裏切られた経験から抜け切れずにいる。キェシロフスキは、この映画のテーマは、もし、ジョーゼフが四十年後に生まれていたらどうなっていたか、という仮定法に基づいていると言っている。この種の仮定法は、彼の映画で繰り返し問題とされるが、この映画では、それが、オーギュストという若き裁判官に具現されており、ジョーゼフは、オーギュストが若い頃の自分の人生を繰り返していくのを見守る。この章では、彼ら二人の分身関係が主な論点とされるが、写真や鏡像と分身のテーマとの関わりにも言及する。また、バレンティンとの出会いを通してのジョーゼフの再生という点も考察される。
結論部では、この三部作全体を貫く問題と分身性との関連性に言及し、分身性というテーマが、三部作の枠組みを越えて、本作品とこれに先立つ『二人のベロニカ』とを、延いては、キェシロフスキの映画世界と観客とを繋ぐものであることを明らかにする。尚、本論文では論じることができなかったが、キェシロフスキの作品では、何人かの作中人物が監督自身の分身的特質を強く備えているばかりでなく、彼の作品の多くに作曲家兼音楽監督として関わったズビグニエフ・プレイスネルが、ヴァン・デン・ブーデンマイヤーという名の分身的人物を複数の作品内に登場させていることを考えると、分身性の問題は、映画作品の枠組みを超えて、作品を生み出した映画制作者自身との関係にまで至る大きな広がりを持つものであると言える。
Contents
Krzysztof Kieslowski is a Polish film
director who was born in 1941 and died in 1996. He studied at the Lodz Film
School, which has produced renowned film directors such as Andrzej Wajda, Roman
Polanski and Krzysztof Zanussi.(2) He started his career as
a documentary filmmaker and then shifted his focus to feature film directing,
which has brought him great international acclaim.(3)
One of the clues to understanding the mysterious nature of his films may be
said to be the issue of doubleness, when employed as an analytical tool. It
is only in The Double Life of Veronique that Kieslowski deals explicitly
with the motif of the so-called "double," that is, "a person
who looks exactly like another." Here I would like to adopt the word, "doubleness,"
and to attribute it a broader sense so as to include those situations in which
any dual or overlapping layers of images or ideas can be found. This idea of
doubleness seems to be existent in many aspects of Kieslowski's films in a range
of forms. Some of the examples are given below.
Kieslowski generally presents a double figure in a subtle and unique way. For
instance, in The Double Life of Veronique, the two main characters, Weronika
and Veronique, who are in a doubled relation to each other, do not confront
each other in a direct way, unlike many other works which deal with the theme
of a double. Although Weronika and Veronique sense each other's existence, their
connection is presented in a very subtle way. Paul Coates pays attention to
the same point: "In the classic scenario of doubling, self and reflection
meet in simultaneous face-off. In The Double Life of Veronique, however,
the heroine's two lives do not parallel and confront one another, but are successive:
Weronika's death shifts the narrative from Poland to the France of her alter
ego."(4) Moreover, they are not as different from
each other as the typical Jekyll-and-Hyde like characters whose characteristics
demonstrate contrasting possibilities.
In No End, one of Kieslowski's earlier feature films, the heroine's
husband appears as a ghost throughout the film. However, the heroine, Urszula,
does not interact with the ghost in an explicit manner as in the Ghost
directed by Jerry Zucker, starring Demi Moore. Urszula realises her love for
her husband after his death. Her husband has become a ghost after death and
watches over his wife. Urszula senses that her husband is still with her but,
basically, she cannot see him. In the end, she decides to commit suicide. Only
after her death, can she be reunited with her husband, with which image the
film ends. Their figures appear half transparent and they pass through the walls
of their house to leave the world together.
Blind Chance, another feature film by Kieslowski, presents a different
type of double. The protagonist is named Witek, a medical student, and the film
shows three stories about his life based on whether or not he catches a train
after deciding to quit his studies. The first story focuses on Witek catching
the train, meeting a communist and becoming a member of the party himself. He
meets his first love one day but their relationship does not last very long
owing to friction between them caused by his communist affiliations. He is offered
an opportunity to go to France, but fails to take the plane for France. In the
second story, he misses the train and gets arrested by a station officer for
crashing into him while he was rushing to catch the train. He is condemned to
serving some time as a labourer and during his sentence he acquaints himself
with a soldier. He decides to join the army. He has another opportunity to visit
France but, again, he ends up not leaving his country. In the third episode,
he misses the train and encounters a fellow medical student whom he eventually
marries. Witek completes his medical studies and, later, when his wife is pregnant
with their second baby, Witek is asked by his associate to go abroad in business
as his substitute. At the last moment, Witek changes the plane ticket to go
via France. The film concludes with the scene of his plane exploding in the
sky.
In Blind Chance, the audience sees three versions of Witek's life and
it can be argued that the three Witeks are in a "double" relation
to one another, since they represent three different life stories depending
on whether Witek catches or misses the fatal train. Each Witek can be considered
as an incarnation of the question "what if"? In Witek's case, what
if he succeeds in catching the train, or what if he takes the plane for France?(5)
This kind of conditional mode is used in other films by Kieslowski such as Red.
In this film, there is a character named Auguste, a young judge, who repeats
many events in the life of another character, Joseph (a retired judge). These
examples are only to name a few of the doubles that can be found in Kieslowski's
films.
This paper discusses different types of doubleness in the three works that
constitute a trilogy, Three Colours: Blue, White, Red and also looks
at the issue of doubleness as something that connects different parts of the
trilogy. Three Colours: Blue, White, Red is named after the colours of
the French Flag. The trilogy examines the meaning of the ideals of the French
Revolution, liberty, equality, fraternity on a personal level and within the
contexts of modern society. Although the trilogy may appear to have political
intentions, the director emphasises that he is only interested in the lives
of individual people and not in political organisations or ideologies.(6)
For instance, in one of his interviews, when asked about the influence of his
experience of living in France to the understanding of his treatment of the
issue of liberty in the film, Blue, he comments as follows: "No,
because this film, like the other two, has nothing to do with politics. I'm
talking about interior liberty. If I wanted to talk about exterior liberty --
liberty of movement -- I would have chosen Poland. . . . But interior liberty
is universal."(7)
Blue was shot from September to November in 1992, and White and
Red were filmed by May in 1993.(8) The screenplay is
a collaboration between Krzysztof Kieslowski and his long-term co-writer, Krzysztof
Piesiewicz, and the musical director is Zbigniew Preisner who had joined in
Kieslowski's filmmaking since No End produced in 1984. Each of the three films
is an independent creation: they are created intentionally with a different
cinematographer and the stories revolve around different protagonists. Kieslowski
himself underlines the individuality of these three films, placing little importance
on the connections between them.(9) In the following chapters,
I would like to examine the films separately to clarify the characteristics
of the theme of doubleness in each of them.
Blue is about a young widow named Julie who loses her
husband and daughter in a car accident at the beginning of the story. The film
traces her struggle in the face of the drastic changes brought about by the
accident. After trying to sever all connections with her past, Julie gradually
reconciles herself with the tragedy and recovers herself, her love and passion.
Her husband, Patrice, was a famous composer, who had been composing music for
the unification of Europe before his death. Julie seems to have been helping
her husband with his composition and it is suggested in the film that she may
have been an editor of his music or even a hidden composer behind Patrice. It
is not clear to what extent she helped her partner. However, the film shows
that, at least, she is familiar with the work of correcting compositions. Patrice
had an assistant named Olivier who has been in love with Julie. Before she leaves
the house in a suburb of Paris where she had been living with her family, she
calls Olivier and they make love. The next morning, she abruptly leaves him
and begins to lead a new, anonymous life in the city of Paris.
Julie thinks that she has cut all her connections with the past and, yet, occasionally
she hears a recurring segment of music from Patrice's unfinished work, which
drags her back towards her past. Likewise, Olivier refuses to leave her alone,
challenging her attitude towards life by announcing his intention to complete
Patrice's unfinished score. When Julie learns about Olivier's plan, she also
discovers that her husband had a mistress. She tries unsuccessfully to convince
Olivier not to proceed with his intentions and also goes to see the mistress,
finding her pregnant with Patrice's baby. Another change in her life occurs
through forming a friendship with her new neighbour, Lucille, a professional
stripper. All these events eventually contribute to Julie's growing ability
to overcome the past, rather than trying to ignore it. As a consequence, she
begins to work on music again, and accepts Olivier's love.
Kieslowski reveals in Kieslowski on Kieslowski that "Blue
is about liberty, the imperfections of human liberty." He poses a question
of "How far are we really free?" through presenting the protagonist's
ostensible freedom and her illusions about the concept.(10)
Julie is very free in a way that she has enough money to survive, so that she
does not have to restrict her time on labours to survive. She is also free from
house keeping business. She frees herself from past relationships and does not
tell anyone of the particulars of her new address. In Kieslowski on Kieslowski,
while discussing his work, Decalogue, Kieslowski mentions the issue of
freedom again: "I believe we are not free. . . . We're always trying to
find a way out. But we're constantly imprisoned by our passions and feelings."(11)
In Julie's case, she becomes caught up with her fear of mice, her jealousy of
her husband's pregnant mistress and with her impossible attempts to free herself
from everything that had contributed to her former identity.
In this chapter, I would like to examine the transformation of the main character,
Julie, pinpointing a kind of doubled relation between the Julie of the past
and the Julie in the present. There is also a doubled image between the baby
mice in her flat and the foetus in Patrice's mistress. Julie suffers from a
fear of mice, a childhood fear which she had forgotten about. This fear, however,
is intertwined with an adult fear of infidelity. The mistress's baby is also
seen as a double of Patrice. Music is another key to comprehending this film.
Some critics even suggest that the music seems to have some physicality like
a ghost, owing to the way in which the music is presented in the film. Hence,
some part of this chapter is devoted to analysing the role of music as a mediator
between the Julie of the past and Julie in the present.
Insdorf points out that, as in Red, Blue begins with sounds,
which precedes the picture of the sounds' source.(12) We hear
the sound of a car driving on a highway and subsequently see a close-up of the
tyre of a car running fast on a grey road. Then the camera moves on to focus
on a girl sitting at the back of the vehicle carefully hiding the faces of the
other two companions in the car, Patrice and Julie. We see Patrice's back and
hear Julie's voice. This deliberate framing is consistent throughout the film
as Patrice's face only appears on photos, although his name is mentioned numerous
times throughout the narrative. Before long, the screen reveals a young man
playing with a cup and ball. He keeps trying to put the ball in the cup without
succeeding. After a few more attempts, he finally puts the ball in the cup,
his face lighting up with a big smile. Shortly afterwards, we hear the sounds
of a car crash. These segments seem to represent how accidental life is, picking
up on one of the recurring themes of Kieslowski's films.(13)
It is all by chance that the car crashed against a tree, that the boy succeeded
in the game just before the accident and that the boy was there beside the road
when the accident happened.
The viewers do not really know what Julie was like before the car accident,
since the screen hardly shows her at the very beginning of the film before the
accident occurs. In contrast, soon after the scene of the car crash, we see
Julie in an extreme close up as she is lying in a hospital bed. We learn about
Julie's past only through Julie's present life. There are flashbacks in the
film but these clues to the protagonist's past only occur in the form of music
and, thus, we are unable to see what she was like visually, as is the common
form of flashbacks in films. As Kieslowski reveals later in his Kieslowski
on Kieslowski, the witness, Antoine, plays the important role of a mediator
between the present Julie and the Julie in the past. As he says, only through
Antoine, are we able to know something that we have not been shown. Firstly,
he leads Julie to reveal Patrice's personal habit of always repeating the punch
line twice when he makes a joke. This is a new and rare piece of information
about Patrice, for otherwise the viewers are only informed that he was a well-known
composer who had a mistress. The other important thing to emerge during the
meeting of Antoine and Julie is that she laughs for the first time in the film,
indicating as Kieslowski notes that, "when she's with Antoine we see that
she used to laugh."(14)
Now I would like to examine Julie's decision to start a new life when she emerges
from the hospital. She arranges the sale of the house that she had shared with
her husband and daughter, in order to erase all reminders of her past family
life. She also organises for her mother to be cared for in a nursing home and
obtains a little apartment for herself in the middle of Paris. James M. Wall
uses the word, "disappearing," to describe Julie's reaction to the
recent trauma.(15) It is different from "moving"
or "changing." Roger Ebert uses the word, "anonymous," in
the same context. He says, "She . . . moves to the centre of Paris, to
what she hopes is an anonymous apartment on an anonymous street."(16)
Wall also describes the first stage that she goes through after the disaster
as "stupor of grief."(17) It seems to me that an
opposite explanation may be necessary; because Julie seems to be highly aware
of what she is doing. The actions she makes at this stage appear to be fairly
decisive. By contrast, she looks unsure about herself when Olivier announces
later in the film that he will not be requiring her assistance any more to correct
his score. I would suggest that she appears to choose one set of directions
with her reason, but something external to her plans draws her in an opposite
direction. Richard Corliss mentions the trap initiated by her highly conscious
scheme. He cites Julie's words first: "I don't want any love, memories,
belongings. Those are traps." Then he points out that, "It takes her
the length of the film to realise that isolation is the deadliest snare, that
the only release is art and passion."(18) The concept
of a hole in an artificial life plan reappears in White, which will be
examined in the following chapter. Kieslowski may be pointing out that life
is not something that we can control through rationally devised planning.
Julie appears at pains to prove that she is not attached to any activity. She
seems to need to say it aloud to other people in order to convince herself.
At the real estate office, when asked for her occupation, she replies that she
does nothing. She repeats the same words to her mother, this time, without being
asked. It sounds more like a declaration of her ideal than a description of
how she actually is. It would be natural to think of death, if someone wants
nothing from life. In fact, she attempts to kill herself in the aftermath of
the accident, while she is still in the hospital. She breaks a window in order
to distract the attention of a nurse nearby and sneaks into a room where medicine
is stored. She takes a jar of pills and places the entire contents into her
mouth, but she regurgitates the pills out on her hand instead of swallowing
them. When she finds the nurse glancing at her, she says, "I can't do it.
I can't." Then she confesses that she has broken the window. The nurse
replies, "It's all right." Julie does not seem to be listening to
her, and says, "I'm sorry." The nurse tries to console her by saying,
"It can be replaced." This line sounds ironical in the context of
a woman who tried to commit suicide for something that could not be replaced,
her family. Insdorf suggests that Julie's reaction is simply as follows: "Unable
to end her life, she at least puts an end to her past."(19)
She cuts almost all the connections with her past life with her husband and
daughter. She refuses to be interviewed; she organises to sell their house and
possessions; she throws away Patrice's latest composition; and she moves into
an apartment without letting anyone know about the new address. When she visits
her mother, she declares; "From now on, I'll only do one thing. Nothing.
I have no possessions, no memories, no friends, loves or ties." She seems
to talk about herself only to her mother. Her mother asks Julie if she has enough
money to make her living, and tells her that it is impossible to reject everything.
Julie's mother reacts with practical advice. However, she is confused about
her daughter's identity. Although Julie's mother's past is not revealed in the
film, one could imagine that she might have gone through a stage where she wanted
to throw away everything in the past, and might have succeeded: now she does
not even recognise her daughter.
Julie appears to execute her plan to cease connections with her past fairly
well. However, there are holes in her scheme that she cannot cover. Firstly,
she cannot control the affects of other people's actions on her life. Although
Julie herself decides to leave all the musical works including Patrice's unfinished
concerto, Olivier makes a move to proceed with Patrice's work and announces
his decision in an interview on television, which Julie happens to see. He also
finds out where Julie is, despite her concealment of her new address. Julie
also cannot dispose of all the property left by her husband and daughter. She
discovers that the officer who was in charge of Patrice's work had taken a copy
of his last score in secret, an action which enables Olivier to work on completing
the composition. She also finds out that her daughter's blue chandelier is left
in her blue room when she had asked Bernard, one of her servants, to remove
everything. In consequence, she takes the chandelier with her to her new apartment,
instead of throwing it away, as she had intended. She also begins to learn about
Patrice's girlfriend and the baby, which makes her decide to give the house
to them, instead of selling it as she had initially planned. Antoine also succeeds
in finding Julie through her doctor. As a result, he informs her of particulars
about the moment of the car crash which inevitably draws her back to the past.
Besides, it becomes clear towards the end of the film that she has not thrown
away the note that Patrice left for the finale of his unfinished concerto. This
turns out to be the final clue to complete the concerto under the names of Julie
and Olivier at the end of the film.
Above all, she cannot control the emergence of the past through the continuous
recurrence of the music within her mind. There are occasional flashbacks through
the film where the music becomes the only continuing factor, often accompanied
by blackouts. Kieslowski himself refers to such moments."Not only does
the music come back to her but time stands still for a moment."(20)
He says that the device is "to convey an extremely subjective point of
view."(21) The time passes, except for Julie who experiences
time stopping for a moment. She cannot tell what is going on around her during
the fade-outs. The music and her past take over without her being able to control
them, cutting her connection with her present life. A couple of times, it happens
when she is with another character. Her interaction with these characters is
interrupted momentarily for reasons that are only explicable to Julie. The following
are the scenes of the flashbacks. The first flashback occurs when she is having
a nap on a chair in the hospital. She suddenly hears fragments of music from
the last and unfinished composition by Patrice with a vision of a blue light.
An interviewer comes into the room and says, "Bonjour." Then there
is a black screen before Julie replies, "Bonjour." In response to
Julie's refusal to take part in an interview, the reporter says, "You've
changed. You used to be nicer." Julie coldly replies, "Didn't you
hear that my husband and daughter died in a car accident?" In one way,
she has not changed at all. Why was she "nicer" to the reporter before?
It is because she had a good reason to be like that. Now the whole circumstances
have changed, and her reason to behave negatively is a logical extension of
her previous behaviour.
Another flashback appears at night, when she locks herself out of her apartment.
She sits on the steps in front of her room, and it is then that she hears the
music re-emerging. There is a reflection of blue light on her face and shoulders,
but this time there is no blackout. She hears the music again when Antoine,
the witness of the car accident, meets her and shows her a chain with a cross.
It is probably a gift from Patrice, for later, the audience as well as Julie
discovers that his girlfriend is wearing an identical necklace to that which
Julie had formerly worn. Antoine tries to talk to her, but Julie refuses to
hear about the accident that he witnessed. Now she experiences a moment of the
music re-occurring. This time she might have anticipated that the flashback
would occur, and that perhaps explains why she refuses to listen to him. Initially,
she even refuses to meet him. Julie has a further blackout with music, when
Olivier asks her what she wants to do with Patrice's mistress. Only after the
black out, can she reply that she wants to see her.
The music, which accompanies these flashbacks, seems to connect the dual layers
of Julie's life which consists of her previous life and her present life. She
tries to control her life by consciously rejecting her past so that she can
launch a new life. However, this disjunction is only possible on a material
level, such as by moving into a new apartment or by disposing of her daughter
and husband's property. No matter how much she tries, she cannot control the
rise of music in her mind since it issues from her unconscious. On one occasion,
she tries to shut out the music with the help of a material intervention. She
is at the pool and, as she surfaces from the water, the music strikes her again.
She goes back into the water to obtain the barrier of water, although the strategy
does not seem to work very well. The music visits her like a ghost from her
past, which is impossible to seize. Geoff Andrew suggests that in the scene
where the music segments occurs to her mind for the first time in the hospital,
it looks "as if the music itself were a (blue?) physical presence,"
for the musical fragments are accompanied by an inexplicable appearance of a
blue light.(22)
The crucial moment that changes Julie's attitude towards her past accidentally
arises when she visits her new girlfriend, Lucille, at her strip bar one night.
A television in the bar happens to be showing the programme about Olivier's
announcement to finish Patrice's unfinished concerto. It is possible that Julie
would never have known about Olivier's project as such as well as Patrice's
mistress, if she had been reluctant to visit Lucille at the bar at midnight
for, as it is revealed in her conversation with her mother, she does not watch
television.(23) While in conversation with Julie, Lucille
stares at something beyond the screen. It appears as if she is looking down
at the audience of the strip show, so when she says, "Julie. . . Is that
you over there?" some viewers might have the sensation that this film might
have begun to approach the mysterious sphere of The Double Life of Veronique.
But then the camera shows a television screen in the distance, where Olivier
is being interviewed about Patrice and his unfinished composition. Julie appears
in historical clips from the composer's life. It is no wonder that Lucille is
unsure if it is Julie or not, for Julie has concealed her past including the
accident, and has changed physically since the image captured was shot just
after the accident.
Finding her own image, Julie replies, "It's me. . ." She is virtually
talking to herself, for Lucille has already left for her show. Besides, Julie
does not seem to care about anything except for the television programme, which
reveals that the European Council has asked Olivier to finish the concerto initially
commissioned to Patrice. It also presents some pictures of Patrice with a young
woman who is a stranger to Julie. Now she takes very prompt actions to get to
know the things around her which she has not known. Her past life finally attracts
her attention. In the same night, she visits a woman who was in charge of Patrice's
score. Earlier in the film, Julie had regained the score from her and had thrown
it away. However, the woman had secretly made a copy of the score, which enabled
Olivier to succeed with the composition. The next day she pursues Olivier to
ask about his project and the young woman in the photos. For the first time
she is chasing him and not vice versa. She also finds out from him that her
husband had a long-time liaison with the young woman, Sandrine. Olivier had
discovered her photos in Patrice's file. He kept the file that Julie had refused
to accept.(24) She goes to the court where Sandrine is working
as a lawyer. At first, Julie stares at a young lady standing at the front of
the court, thinking that the woman might be Sandrine. It is no wonder that Julie
is not sure of Sandrine's appearance, for she has seen her only in photos. After
observing the young lady for a while, she concludes that she is mistaken. She
walks farther into the court and finds Sandrine who is about to go into a courtroom
to defend Dominique against Karol from White. (The same scene is captured
through from another standpoint at the beginning of White.) It is interesting
to see how Kieslowski draws attention to our daily life's confusion about people's
identity.(25)
One of the requirements on which Julie insists in the real estate office when
she is seeking a new apartment is that there are no children living in the same
building. She moves into an apartment which suits her requirement. However,
after a while, she goes back to the real estate agent and asks for another place,
because she is scared of the squeaking noise of mice in her unit. Insdorf suggests
that Julie's fear about the mice might be more to do with babies than with animals,
associating the noise of baby mice with the squeals of a group of little girls
who once jumped into the pool when she was swimming.(26) It
is also possible that the fear of mice is not only associated with her daughter's
death but also with Sandrine's pregnancy due to her affair with Patrice. In
the pool scene, her face becomes blank in contrast with the vivid joy of the
girls in the background. The happier the girls appear, the more painful the
experience must be for her, for it would unavoidably raise the emotional loss
of her daughter. As a child, she was scared of mice. She clarifies her vague
memory of her childhood phobia by questioning her mother. Why has the fear suddenly
come back? It seems to derive from her doubled shock to learn that Patrice's
mistress is pregnant with his child, not long after she has lost her only daughter,
Anna. The mouse in her unit has just had babies, too, which must remind Julie
of both her daughter's death and her husband's deceit. The x-ray of the foetus
in the girlfriend's womb appears to be doubled with the image of a baby mouse.
Because the agent tells her that there is no alternative accommodation available,
she tries to get over her problem. Consequently, she decides to kill the mice.
She rents a cat from a downstairs' neighbour and leaves it in her room. She
goes to a swimming pool and experiences a flashback accompanied by music, mentioned
earlier. When her girlfriend, Lucille, finds her in the pool, Julie is crying.
This is the first time that she cries in the film. Julie explains what she has
done to the mice. Although this is the only time that her emotion penetrates
the wall she has built to separate her from the past, she insistently refuses
to reveal the depth of her fear and sadness, and blurs it with the superficial
incident with the mice and a cat.
Lucille plays a significant part in helping Julie recover. Although she does
not know anything concrete about Julie's past, she senses that something disastrous
has occurred in Julie's life. She becomes Julie's first and only friend in the
new life. She helps Julie to maintain connections with the outside world in
her intentionally isolated life, and is willing to support her when she is in
trouble without invading her privacy. Geoff Andrew argues that Lucille may be
representing "a surrogate daughter-figure" for Julie. He finds one
implication in that Lucille is "arguably the film's most 'innocent' character
in so far as, like a child, she happily goes about without underwear and naively
believes that anyone would, like her, enjoy exposing their naked body to the
public gaze." He also points to the fact that Lucille, on finding a blue
chandelier in Julie's apartment, claims that she had such a thing as a child.(27)
However, this argument is hard to support. Firstly, although little children
may not be shy about being naked in public, they do not seem to be aware of
that state, while strippers take off their clothes on purpose. Secondly, the
fact that Lucille recognises Julie's daughter's chandelier as something from
her childhood past proves that she is no more a child.
Olivier is a contrastive character to Lucille in that he drags Julie out of
the vacancy of her new life, since he is highly aware of the background that
caused her present status. He may have also known an aspect of Julie that she
has concealed from herself in her previous life. Towards the end of the film,
he suggests to Julie that they should name themselves as the composers of the
concerto for the unification of Europe. Julie has never admitted that she takes
part in Patrice's composition. Now Julie finally takes a step in identifying
herself as a musical collaborator. Olivier must have known how essential music
is in Julie's life. He actually proposes to complete Patrice's composition,
so that he might help Julie to recover her passion for music and life. When
Julie asks him about the project, he clarifies the reason why he had accepted
the work: "So I could make you cry, so I could make you run. It was the
only way to make you care." Julie loses her words for a moment; she is
losing her dominance over him. Insdorf finds a duality in Olivier's character.
According to her, he is finishing Patrice's composition "like a dutiful
shadow." However, he regards himself as "a composer in his own right."
He had previously asked Julie for her advice on his draft of the score. However,
at the end, when Julie tells him on the phone that she has finished the composition,
he refuses to accept her version of the score, saying that his attempt means
that it is his own work, no matter how incomplete it might be. There is a scene
where the screen shows him with his reflection on the lid of a grand piano,
and Insdorf suggests that the image means an "externalisation of his split
personality."(28)
At the end of the film, Julie makes love with Olivier. David Bromwich interprets
this as "a consolation she can give rather than take" for his less
than outstanding music talent.(29) It is true that Julie is
"very generous" in some ways as is described in the film by her treatment
of Patrice's mistress and through her assistance in Patrice's composition without
announcing her contribution to the work. However, even though she appears extraordinary
generous at times from a common sense perspective, she also seems to have her
own reasons for that generosity. Maybe she gave her husband's inheritance to
his mistress, because she could not bear the thought of self-abhorrence born
of jealousy. She may have rather preferred that the woman would be indebted
to her. In the last scene when she makes love with Olivier, she finally seems
to accept Olivier's love rather than "consoling" him. This relationship
between Olivier and Julie is contrastive to that in the beginning of the film
where Julie takes the initiative and controls the whole situation: she calls
him to her place when she wants, and leaves him behind abruptly without explanations.
Now she goes to his place herself and accepts his love. When they make love
this time, she finally cries. Insdorf interprets the tears as suggestive of
"a return to life."(30) Although her past life with
a successful composer may have appeared almost perfect, it must have been lacking
in something fundamental, considering that her husband had had a mistress for
years in secret. Now she has overcome the shock of the accident and the discovery
of the mistress. She has also found love in music as well as in Olivier and,
with his support, she is now able to admit that she takes part in composing
music, which she could never do before. Through the disastrous experience in
her life, Julie might have become happier at the end of the film with a transformed
self.
Chapter 3 Three Colours: White
Karol Karol, named after
Charles Chaplin, is a young Polish hairdresser living in France. At the beginning
of the film, he is forced to divorce his beautiful French wife owing to impotence.
At first, he is devastated, then he decides to seek revenge on his ex-wife,
Dominique, by becoming her equal. He returns to Poland with the help of Mikolaj
whom he encounters at a train station, while playing a Polish song on a comb
wrapped in a paper. Karol manages to accumulate a fortune in his own country
and, subsequently, prepares an intriguing plan for his revenge. He writes a
will leaving all his fortune to his ex-wife, Dominique, and organises a fake
funeral in order to lure her to Poland through the lucrative will. After his
own funeral, Karol goes to Dominique's hotel, and waits for her in bed. On her
return, he reveals his plan and, recovering his sexual potency, they make love.
The next morning, Karol leaves while Dominique is still asleep, and the police
arrest Dominique on suspicion of killing her ex-husband for his wealth. Karol's
plan is not yet finished. Ironically, Dominique is now in the vulnerable position,
just like Karol had been in France, for she is imprisoned for committing a murder
of a man who is still alive. According to Karol's original plan, he was to fly
abroad before her arrest. However, he finds himself still in love with her and
decides to stay in Poland, visiting her in prison. The film ends when Dominique
gestures her wish to remarry him from behind bars.
Kieslowski says, "White is about equality understood as a contradiction. . . . I don't think anybody really wants to be equal. Everyone wants to be more
equal."(31) As Kieslowski puts it, after the main character
goes through an extreme humiliation, is rejected in love, and loses his possessions,
"he wants to show that not just is he not as low as he's fallen, not just
is he on a level with everybody else, but that he's higher, that he's better."(32)
In fact, once he arrives in his home country, he is not satisfied with only
being a hairdresser, as he used to be. Soon after he begins his life in Poland
again, he goes to see a Mafia-like man and tells him that being a hairdresser
does not bring him much money and that making money is what he wants to learn
about. Thus begins his new business where he becomes the boss and earns an outstanding
amount of money. However, he also wants to be "more equal" in sexual
ability than other men. When he finally succeeds in provoking Dominique's orgasm,
he says to her with satisfaction, "You were louder than you were on the
phone." The comment refers to Karol's humiliation through Dominique's behaviour
with another man, relayed to Karol via the phone just before he leaves France.(33)
There are different kinds of doubleness in this film. Firstly, the main character,
Karol, shows an amazing transformation from his sense of identity at the beginning
of the film to a form of self-development brought about by his struggle to overcome
a disastrous event in his life. A timid, pathetic man, who had seemed to have
nothing else to support himself except his hairdressing competency, transforms
into a confident, commanding parvenu through a passionate drive for revenge.
I would like to examine how he changes and how this change in him is presented
in the film, arguing that the two Karols create a form of double over time.
Also, his life gains a duality from the moment of his fake funeral, when he
lives side by side with his deceased identity. The third doubleness is presented
in the form of a white bust of a young lady. He finds the sculpture just before
he leaves France and it becomes a symbol of his ex-wife as well as her substitute.
The changing circumstances of Karol's life begin when he is confronted by impotence.
Karol appears devastated and desperate, but he seems to overcome the miserable
state as a defeated man when he is utterly humiliated by Dominique. He rings
her at night from a train station, which is located in front of her apartment,
while noticing a man's shadow at her window. When she answers the phone, she
forces him to listen to her orgasm with the man who is not, like Karol, impotent.
He slams the phone down, finding the machine has taken his change of two francs.
He goes to the station clerk's window and tells a clerk that the machine has
taken his change. The clerk almost ignores him at first, but then Karol, who
had looked until then like a shy, cowardly man, tells him with an enraged face
and voice that he had better give him the change. The matter of the change itself
is a trifling incident. However, for Karol it is essentially a matter of fair
trade and equality. At this moment, it seems that Karol decides to concentrate
all his efforts on achieving a status of equality with his ex-wife. This coin,
eventually conceded by the clerk, is his last coin and he takes it to Poland
with him.
He again becomes frantic about the coin, back in Poland. He is smuggled into
his homeland in a suitcase that is stolen by airport workers and dropped off
at a dump on top of a snowy hill. The robbers are furious to find that all their
efforts to carry the enormously heavy suitcase end up with only a human body
and a two francs coin. When one of them takes the coin away from him, Karol
suddenly gains a surprising burst of energy. He attacks the man and retrieves
his coin but, at the same time, he is kicked and hit by the men and thrown into
a hole at the dump. Waking up, he looks at snow-covered Warsaw and says, "Home
at last." He goes to his brother's hair salon where he convalesces. Karol,
at one point, thinks of throwing the coin into a river. However, when he attempts
to throw it away, he finds that the coin has stuck on his hand. He looks at
the coin from below, holding his hand out with the palm down. He even shakes
his hand a little to see if it will budge. It doesn't. The next camera shot
shows a decisive face focused on a plan. He appears to be saying that he will
not give up until he reaches his goal, no matter what happens. Then there is
the first flash-forward of Dominique after his funeral. She is in black, looking
down, in a very dark space, which turns out to be the hotel room in which she
stays in Poland, when she comes over for her ex-husband's funeral.
This coin seems to symbolise Karol as a revenger. He receives the coin at the
moment when he decides on his scheme of revenge on Dominique and he guards it
up until the moment when he thinks his plan for revenge is totally organised
by obtaining a dead body for his fake funeral. He and his assistant go to a
train station at night where he buys an imported body whose face is smashed
in and, thus, is unrecognisable. The body along with the precious coin is kept
in a coffin. He is confident that Dominique will come to Poland for his funeral
because of the will. Now he only waits to see her fall into his intriguing trap.
Previously there is a scene where he spins the coin on a table and stares at
it, followed by a flash-forward of the scene when Dominique comes back to a
hotel room after attending his funeral. His glaring face suggests his strong
will to achieve his purpose.
Parting from his precious two franc coin, he now faces another phase of his
life. He had organised a death certificate through his assistant and his fake
funeral proceeds. At the funeral, he peeps at Dominique through binoculars.
What he sees are her tears. His close-up shows his pity for her grief over his
unreal death. The grief does not stay long because, after Karol astonishes Dominique
in the hotel, they finally achieve consummation. However, the next morning,
he leaves her in the room and hides himself. Finding herself alone in the room,
Dominique rings Mikolaj in her quest to find her lover. The next conversation
works on a dual level because of different perceptions about his existence:
Dominique: Where's Karol?
Mikolaj: He's dead.
Dominique: He's not, last night. . .
Mikolaj: You were at his funeral.
Dominique: I wasn't. He was alive.
Mikolaj: I'm sorry.
Dominique: You must help me find him. . . I love him.
Mikolaj: Sure. He's in Section 23, plot number 10,675. The name of the cemetery in Polish is Powazkowski.
Here, she is trapped in the doubleness of his official death and his private
actuality. Mikolaj's response is totally ironical, since he is one of a few
people who know the truth behind the funeral. He stays thoroughly official for
the fraternity of Karol, who once saved his life. While on the phone, Dominique
hears a knock at the door. She cries with a joy, "He's back." She
opens the door only to find interrogating policemen whose presence had been
planned by Karol in advance. In front of all these official people, her words
about Karol being alive sound idiotic or even a vain, naive attempt to cover
her guilt over his murder. She is literally caged in by his trap.
However, at the same time, Karol is trapped in his own scheme. Especially at
the funeral and also through the loving night with Dominique, he seems to realise
that he still loves her. That is why he does not take the plane as he had organised
earlier to leave his past with Dominique behind. For him, the achievement of
equality that seemed to be the very end of the story with Dominique now proves
to be only another beginning. Instead of leaving all his former life in France
and Poland for Singapore, he goes in stealth to the prison where Dominique is
incarcerated. Before visiting her at the prison, he stands for a while at the
window at his brother's place in a daze, probably from the gap between his picture
of the future and his actual situation at the culmination of his revenge. His
brother warns him, "Don't stand in the window. Somebody will see you again."
At this stage, Karol, who perhaps has impressed many of the audience with his
elaborate scheme of revenge, appears diminished as if acknowledging that he
has made so much effort only to place himself in bigger trouble. However, although
originally outside of his plan, the grand scheme does bring about a happy realisation
that he and Dominique still love each other. At the end of the film, Dominique
promises to remarry him through gestures perceived between the prison bars,
leaving Karol smiling through his tears. Later, at the end of Red, we
see a glimpse of the two of them being rescued from a devastating ferry accident:
they had departed for a voyage for their new life with love, which is now rescued
again. Even though Karol has gone through a dramatic change in his life, his
love for Dominique remains the same or even has grown more.
This conclusion seems to suggest that there are situations that can be intentionally
changed, while less material aspects such as love are enduring. Here, the film,
White resembles the preceding film, Blue. Both of the protagonists,
Karol and Julie, consciously change their life, and partly their personality,
in order to terminate their past. Their intentions succeed to a certain degree,
but both confront elements that had not been part of their original plans. After
all, life is controllable only to some extent, partly because we do not know
enough about ourselves. In this case, probably both Karol and Julie underestimated
their love, the love for Dominique in Karol's case and the love for music and
perhaps for Olivier, in Julie's case.
Like Julie, Karol scarcely brings anything, in the material sense, from his
previous life into the new one. The difference is that while Julie does so on
purpose, Karol is forced to lose most of his possessions, including his hair
salon and bank account. He only intentionally gets rid of his certificates from
his hairdressing career, which had represented the centre of his life up until
then. He had met Dominique at a hairstyle competition and, subsequently, they
married and opened a fashionable hair salon in Paris. Insdorf points out a similarity
between the scene where Karol throws away his rolled up diplomas onto the tracks
in a subway before leaving France, and the scene in Blue where Julie
throws Patrice's score of Concerto into a rubbish truck, both of which represent
their attempt to "free themselves from the immediate past."(34)
Geoff Andrew acknowledges the same point, saying that both Blue and White
have common themes, one of which is "the need to let go of the past, while
at the same time acknowledging its existence, in order to proceed with the present."(35)
On the other hand, there are some things that both Karol and Julie take with
them into their new life. For Julie it is her daughter's blue chandelier, which
she takes with her, when she moves into her new apartment. Karol insists on
taking two things with him to his homeland. One is the two franc coin, mentioned
earlier, and the other is a white bust of a young lady. This bust plays an important
role in his new life as a symbol of Dominique and is associated with the meaning
of the chandelier for Julie, being a symbolic reminder of her daughter and her
past life.
Karol finds the bust in a shop window in France. When he decides to go back
to Poland with Mikolaj's help, he tells him that he has to do something first.
It is to steal the bust from the shop. The statue gets broken when one of the
thieves throws it away. The thieves also throw Karol into the dump, and when
he wakes, he finds the bottom part of the sculpture and grabs it. When he is
settled in his brother's place in Poland, he fixes the bust. While sticking
the last broken piece into its proper place, the bust moves a little. In reality,
it is just because his hand happened to push the object lightly. However, it
looks as if the bust has gained a life of its own, particularly to Karol, who
still desires his ex-wife. He gives an affectionate look to it and pushes it
again. On another night, he is learning French from a cassette tape and he turns
his attention towards the statue, moving closer and closer to it. The sculpture's
head is inclined to one side slightly. For a moment, it looks as if two lovers
are looking at each other in the dark. The white bust now looks black because
of the darkness and Karol kisses the still form. Here it functions as a substitute
for his ex-wife. Unlike Dominique, the girl of the statue does not reject him.
She just looks at him warmly.
One night, Karol calls Dominique's name in his dream. The camera shows a close-up
of the statue located on top of a tall set of drawers before approaching Karol
blurred in the background. We hear him call her name, while looking at the image
of the bust, so it feels as if the bust has gained the substance of the name.
The camera shifts its focus on Karol, as he wakes up. When he wakes up, he rings
Dominique, but as soon as Dominique realises who is calling, she rejects him
and hangs up the phone. While the real Dominique is present, the statue is out
of the screen. Karol disappointedly puts down the phone and gives a reproachful
look in the direction of the statue. The next shot shows the still form looking
down at him as ever.
The bust has a strong presence in Karol's life, the camera quite often capturing
Karol with the object, whether or not there is any interaction between the two
of them. The statue actually seems to change its position depending on where
Karol is. For instance, when he is getting dressed in his room to make an arrangement
about the land with Mafia-like men, the camera captures the bust at the background
by the window in the gentle morning sunshine. The sculpture's changing locations
suggest that Karol must have needed something to fill the absence of Dominique
in his life.
The reference to doubleness is also present through the image of reflections
in this film, as in Blue. When Karol visits a farmhouse that he intends
to purchase, he stays overnight. When he wakes up in the morning, he looks at
his reflection in a glass, using the reflection to arrange his hair. His image
is slightly deformed because of the uneven surface of the glass. For a brief
moment, he looks slimmer and tougher, and to some degree, he has actually become
like that. He is at the farm from which he will make a huge profit and, although
he still has to deal with the gang from whom he stole the information about
the land, he is not scared of anything any more, probably because he has gone
through the worst. He creates a new hairstyle for himself in the mirror image,
combing back all his hair into a style that projects his businessman image.(36)
He changes his clothes, too. He wears a fashionable business suit, and his behaviour
reflects his confidence about what he is doing. He does not look like the guy
any more who was playing songs with his comb for some coins down at the train
station. However, he has not completely changed. Rather we see the two faces
of Karol now, the business face of Karol and the face of Karol in love. When
he is dealing with his business, he is confident and knows what to do, everything
working as he wishes. On the contrary, his face is totally vulnerable in dealing
with his emotions, as, for instance, when he rings Dominique.
Mikolaj offers another type of doubleness through talking about himself in
the third person singular in order to make it sound like a story about someone
else. This trait first appears when he meets Karol for the first time. When
Karol tells him about his difficult situation, Mikolaj offers him a job. In
response to questions about the details of the work, Mikolaj explains: "It's
to kill someone. It's what he wants himself. He says he's lost the will to live.
A compatriot. He'll pay very well, enough to live on for six months." At
this stage, Karol refuses to be involved in such a job as he is not yet ready
to do anything in pursuit of his goal. However, later in Poland, Karol asks
about the job again. At this stage, Karol does not seem to have any suspicion
that Mikolaj actually refers to Mikolaj himself. He asks Mikolaj if he is still
in touch with "the man." When Mikolaj replies that he can make contact
with him, Karol says; "He needs help. Someone has to help him." This
is how Karol justifies pursuing such a job, although he is talking about himself,
too, since it is Karol who desperately needs help now, help from Mikolaj.
Karol and Mikolaj arrange the time and date for the job to be done. When Karol
arrives in the dark subway, Mikolaj appears. Karol asks him, "What happened?
Did he change his mind?" At this stage, Mikolaj finally confesses that
the story is his own. He urges the hesitating Karol to shoot him by grabbing
Karol's gun and targeting himself on his chest. Karol shoots. When Mikolaj begins
falling down with the sound of the gunshot, the screen shows the movement in
slow motion for the first and last time in the film. Karol supports him quickly
before he collapses. Slowly, Mikolaj opens his eyes. Karol must have anticipated
that Mikolaj was talking about himself, since he had prepared an empty shell
in the gun's firing compartment. He tells Mikolaj that the second shot will
be real, if that is what he wishes. Karol repeats his question, "Are you
sure?" Mikolaj finally shakes his head in denial. Mikolaj insists that
Karol should still take the money for his work. Karol accepts but only as a
loan for his new business, which they establish together later on.
The next scene takes place on a frozen lake. The white colour dominates the
screen, contrasting with the previous shadowy scene in the subway. Now filled
with life, they run and slip on the ice like two children. Mikolaj says that
he feels as if he had just finished school. Mikolaj says, "Anything's possible,"
and gives a loud cry of joy. Karol seems to have not only saved him, but also
raised him onto the next phase in his life, wherein Mikolaj gains a real appreciation
of life in contrast to his previous existence like a dead man. For the first
time in the film, Mikolaj laughs with joy in response to his new, second life.
Similarly, the concept of death gives Karol another life. As we have seen earlier,
his scheme of a fake funeral brings his ex-wife back and leads to the realisation
of his love for her. Insdorf mentions the same point, saying that both Karol
and Mikolaj go through a deceptive death to be reborn with a second chance which
she regards as a theme that penetrates the Three Colours trilogy: earlier
mistakes serve as a foundation for future successes.(37)
Red, the last film of the trilogy, takes place in Geneva
and the story is about a friendship between a young model and student, Valentine,
and an old retired judge, Joseph Kern. Kieslowski says that it is a film of
isolation.(38) The location of the film was deliberately chosen,
for he considers Switzerland as the most isolated among all European countries.
The main characters, Valentine and Joseph are both isolated in their own way.
Besides, the frequent appearance of phone conversations seems to draw attention
to the isolation born of modern life in general. Valentine is a good-natured,
gentle girl. She has a boyfriend, but he is abroad on business, and their only
communication is through phone calls. From their phone talk, it becomes apparent
that her boyfriend holds a strong sense of possession over her, with no room
for trust. He repeatedly asks if she is by herself and what she has been doing,
as if to control her life even from overseas. At one time, he suggests that
she discontinue her job as a model. Valentine rejects his suggestion in a mild
manner. On the other hand, when Valentine asks him if he loves her, he only
replies that he thinks so. While Valentine wants a clearer reply, he says that
there is no difference between whether he loves her, or he thinks he does. At
the same time, Valentine is anxious about her sixteen-year-old brother named
Marc. He has been addicted to drugs, since discovering that his father was not
his real father at the age of fifteen. Valentine, living apart from both her
brother and mother, worries about them both. She suggests that her brother visit
their mother because she would enjoy his company. At the same time, she warns
him not to mention anything about his drug problem. Valentine cannot endure
the thought of her mother learning to know about her son's unhappy condition.
In the end, she decides to leave for England to see her boyfriend, although
she is still worried about the situation.
Joseph, on the other hand, has had an early retirement from his judicial profession.
He is living by himself on top of a hill in Geneva. He is deeply hurt from an
experience of deception caused by a girlfriend in his youth, and ever since,
he has not had close relations with women. Now he spends his time eavesdropping
on his neighbour's phone conversations. In this way, he has insight into other
people's private feelings, while refusing to have any real relationships himself.
However, Valentine brings about a change in his pessimistic views of life. One
day, Valentine runs over his dog, Rita. Finding a label on her neck with the
address, she immediately takes the dog to the owner, Joseph. However, his attitude
is far from what she had expected. He tells her that he does not really care
about the dog. In shock and rage, Valentine takes the dog to a veterinary doctor.
There she finds that Rita's injury is not very serious and that she is expecting
puppies. Consequently, she decides to keep the dog at her place. One day, she
takes Rita for a walk, only to find that, when Valentine releases the leash,
the dog disappears. Valentine returns to Joseph's place, where she finds the
dog reinstalled with her owner. In a way, the dog brings the two characters
together. On this second visit to his place, Valentine happens to find him eavesdropping
on his neighbour's phone conversation. Although she feels his behaviour is offensive,
there is not much she can do about it. Furthermore, she is shocked by his negative
view of people.
However, her visit leads the old judge to stop his eavesdropping. Soon after
she leaves, he decides to write both to the court and to his neighbours to denounce
himself. Consequently, his story appears in the paper, which prompts another
visit from Valentine in order to let him know that she has not talked about
him to anyone. Valentine's reaction is exactly in accord with what Joseph expected.
He reveals that his real motivation in denouncing himself was to see her again.
This third meeting between them is much more amiable than the previous two.
Both protagonists seem to have broken down their psychological barriers and
they freely talk about themselves. As a result, Valentine invites him to her
fashion show and, thus, Joseph begins to assume significance in her life, just
as she does in his life.
The film has a sub plot revolving around a young man named Auguste who lives
near Valentine. Their lives often cross, but they never appear to notice each
other until the end of the film. Auguste seems to repeat Joseph's life in fine
detail. Firstly, he passes an examination to become a judge in exactly the same
way as Joseph had done many years earlier. They both happen to drop their law
book before the day of their examination and read the page opened by the incident.
The answers to the examination questions are on that page, which contributes
greatly for them to gain their legal qualifications. Secondly, both men are
deceived by their partners. Joseph knows Auguste through his phone eavesdropping
and from seeing him with his girlfriend who lives across the road, a spatial
relationship replicated by August and Valentine. As the story evolves, the connection
between Joseph and Auguste is revealed. The film ends when Auguste finally meets
Valentine in a ferry accident.
The film, Red, also incorporates alternative kinds of doubleness than
those that occur in the other films that we have examined. The major doubled
relationship can be found in the connection between the retired judge and the
young judge, further consolidated by the similarity between Joseph's lover and
Auguste's girlfriend both in their deceptive behaviours and appearances. The
old judge is, at the same time, often considered a double figure of the director,
Kieslowski himself. Valentine gains a kind of double in Joseph's dream, where
she appears as an older woman, intimating that the dream figure glimpses into
Valentine's future. Valentine's presence is often dominated by photographic
images, being supported by her career as a model. There is also a powerful use
of reflections throughout the film. Details of these points will be examined
below.
The first scene shows someone's hand dialing a phone alongside Valentine's
framed photo. The person who is making a call turns out to be her boyfriend,
Michel. Many of her photos are inserted during the film, mainly because she
is a fashion model, currently making a chewing gum commercial. There is a scene
of a cameraman shooting her in a studio, where Valentine stands in front of
a bright red background. Amongst the many photos taken, Valentine chooses the
one with a sad look on her face to be enlarged for the advertisement. This huge
poster exerts a great presence throughout the film. It is hung on the wall of
a busy street in Geneva and the film shows both Auguste and Joseph respectively
seeing the image for the first time. When Auguste finds it, he even stops for
a while at the cross section until the following car beeps at him. This incident
contrasts with the fact that he never notices the real Valentine crossing so
closely next to him every now and then in the town. Joseph also spends some
time watching the picture of Valentine.
We see the huge image of Valentine getting crashed on the ground, when the
poster is taken away owing to a storm towards the end of the film. This collapsed
image may be meant to be an omen because shortly after this occurrence, she
is involved in a disastrous ferry accident on her way to see her boyfriend.
Fortunately, she is found among the seven survivors out of some 1,400 people
on the ferry. At the end of the film, we see Valentine on the television news
that captured the rescuing scene. The film ends with a close-up of Valentine's
face just after the rescue, which closely resembles the picture of her on the
poster. The poster image, captured when the cameraman tells her to think of
something disastrous in order to achieve a look of great sadness, is replicated
in the television frame in the aftermath of a genuine tragedy. Although she
is lucky enough to survive the disaster, as Geoff Andrew points out, we should
not forget that the experience took away more than 1,400 lives.(39)
Insdorf cites Kieslowski's comment on fate with regard to the connection between
the photo and the last image of the film: "Fate was pre-ordained: the image
of her existed before the catastrophe. Maybe there is fate, an image that has
to repeat itself."(40) Insdorf points out in detail that
the last image of Valentine is the left profile in the same manner as the previously
taken photo for the advertisement, and the gray sweater around her shoulder
in the photo "foreshadows" the same coloured blanket wrapped around
her in the scene of the rescue. Insdorf also notes a similar relation between
a picture image and the real in other parts of the film. She refers to a painting
of a ballerina in Auguste's room, observing that Valentine incarnates this image
of female beauty when she arches her back in the same manner during her ballet
lesson later in the film.(41)
The ferry accident finally brings Auguste and Valentine together. On the television
screen that Joseph is watching, we see these two characters being rescued together.
Among the other survivors are Julie and Olivier from Blue, Karol and
Dominique from White, and one other, a bar man, whom we do not know.
We finally see that all the major characters in the trilogy have been rescued.
Some people may think that this resolution is too much of a coincidence, being
too artificial that one ferry accident contained all the major characters from
the three films as survivors. However, Kieslowski formed the idea from the opposite
direction, wishing to make a series about survivors of an accident, just as
he had decided to tell stories about residents in the same apartment complex
in Warsaw for his Decalogue series. He says that everyone has a story
that is worth looking into.(42)
In terms of the use of reflections in Red, Joseph's mysterious house
offers a great scope. When Veronique visits Joseph's place for the second time,
the camera captures her with two mirror images in the background. The camera
also shows a clear life size image of her face on the glass of a picture frame,
while Joseph talks to her about the relationship between Auguste and his lover.
A strong effect is achieved by the strength conveyed in the reflected image
against the more vulnerable expression on her actual face. The two disparate
images are captured in the same camera frame next to each other, as if to portray
the dual sides of her inner life.
Joseph's house, as a place to generate these reflections, may imply that Joseph
himself has spent so long in reflecting his life and his potential lives. Auguste
could be a mere product of Joseph imagining what his life would be like if he
had been born decades later.(43) Kieslowski himself says:
"we'll never be sure whether Auguste really does exist or whether he is
only a variation of the judge's life forty years later." The next conversation
between Valentine and Joseph may support this argument, for it suggests that,
as a judge, Joseph has spent his life considering the lives of the accused from
their viewpoints, using his imagination to interpret human behaviour in a multitude
of different situations. The conversation is triggered by an incident of a stone
thrown against his window. He has just denounced himself and he confesses that
it is the sixth time that someone has thrown a stone at his house. While Valentine
cleans up the broken window, he stays calmly on his chair, and then goes to
the window. She inquires if he is not afraid. He replies, "I wonder what
I'd done if I were them. I'd do the same." Valentine does not hide her
surprise; "Throw stones?" He admits without hesitation, "If I
were them? Of course. And that applies to everyone I've tried. In their situation,
I'd steal, too. I'd kill, I'd lie. . . Of course I would. I didn't because I wasn't
in their shoes." Joseph, in contrast to his first impression as an unpleasant,
even cold-hearted man, appears to be a very compassionate person. He would have
thought about what he would have done in his own life, if the situation were
different. For instance, he may have imagined a happy marriage, if his first
and last love had not died so young from an accident. Or he may have wondered
about his life, if he had not passed the exam to become a judge. He may have
become a judge only from the coincidence of dropping the law book, which opened
at the page that gave the answers to the exam questions.
The doubled relationship between Joseph and Auguste is different from that
of Weronika and Veronique. Firstly, their connection is not based on identical
appearance. The doubling emerges because of the two men's similar life course
and the coincidental things that occur in their lives. Another difference is
that, as Kieslowski explains, Veronique and Weronika both have an intuition
about the other's existence, while in Red, Auguste has no idea about
Joseph, though Joseph knows about him. The director says that the film is about
a question posed as to whether people are sometimes born in the wrong time by
coincidence. It is strongly suggested in the film and by the director that Joseph
and Valentine would make a good couple, if only they had been born in the same
generation. Therefore, as Kieslowski admits, he uses the conditional mood for
the story. That is, he explores the case of Joseph being born forty years later
in the form of Auguste.(44)
In relation to the question of Auguste's existence, Insdorf cites her interview
with the director at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival: "The theme of 'Red'
is in the conditional mood. . .what would have happened if the judge had been
born forty years later. . .. It would be lovely if we could go back to the age
of twenty. How many better, wiser things we could have done! But it's impossible.
That's why I made this film - that maybe life can be lived better than we do."(45)
However, he also poses a question of whether the judge really exists. He notes
that the tribunal is the only place that the audience see him with other people.
He says that otherwise, "he could be merely a ghost, or better yet, a possibility
- the old age that awaits Auguste, what might have happened if Auguste had not
taken the ferry," that is, if he had not met Valentine.(46)
After all, the answer for the question of whether Auguste is an echo of Joseph
or if Joseph represents one of the possibilities in Auguste's life seems to
depend merely on the perspective of the viewer, and the fact that Kieslowski
gives two different ideas seems to suggest that it would not matter either way.
Joseph and Auguste's main problem lies in their relationship with their respective
girlfriends. Auguste has a blonde, attractive girlfriend, who is a year or two
older than him. It is revealed later that Joseph had an older blonde girlfriend,
too. Asked about his lover by Valentine after her fashion show, Joseph describes
her as follows: "A student, two years ahead of me. She was blonde, delicate. . .luminous. . .
She had a long neck. Her clothes were pale. Her furniture was pale." Auguste's
girlfriend congratulates him when he passes his exam to become a judge and gives
him a pen as a present. It is implied that Joseph also received a pen from his
girlfriend. When he decides to write letters to denounce himself, he finds that
his pen is broken after many years of use.
Not long after Auguste passes the exam, he finds out that his lover is deceiving
him. One night, after being unable to contact her by phone for a whole day,
he drives to her apartment, eavesdrops at her door, and hears something, probably
a man's voice. He climbs up to her window, which is two or three storey high
and sees a man moving between his naked girlfriend's legs. The experience is
basically the same as that which Joseph confronted decades earlier, though in
this instance the image was caught in a mirror. The audience become aware of
the repeated incident when Joseph confesses to Valentine about the day that
he saw his girlfriend's white legs spread out with a man between them in her
mirror with the white frame.
There are a couple of additional things that are common to both of them. One
commonality is that they both live with a dark coloured dog. Secondly, just
as Weronika and Veronique both favour Budenmajer's music, Joseph and Auguste
also like his music. Another coincidence concerns a failure of their car batteries.
On the night that August finds out about his girlfriend's adultery, he leaves
his car lights on. Valentine notices that the battery is fading, as she looks
out of her apartment window. Later, during her conversation with Joseph, he
mentions that his car battery was low on the night before his examination to
become a judge. The camera captures Valentine's attention in response to the
comment about his battery. She probably associates Joseph's incident with her
memory of Auguste's car battery, which leads her to a clearer awareness of the
doubled life of Joseph and Auguste.
Joseph seems to have been aware of Auguste as his double for a long while,
whereas Auguste is totally unaware of Joseph. Joseph even anticipates the end
of Auguste's relationship with his girlfriend, while it appears as if they are
still happy together. From another angle, there is a question about Auguste's
existence. He may be a flashback of Joseph in a slightly deformed manner, or
an incarnation of one of Kieslowski's repeated questions of "what if. . .?",
as I mentioned earlier. What if Valentine were born some decades earlier? The
apparently happy middle-aged woman in Joseph's dream prompts Valentine to ask
more about the dream next time she sees him: 'In that dream. . .was there someone
else?' Her curiosity appears to relate to her feeling of insecurity about her
boyfriend. Joseph's dream does not identify the woman's partner even though
Valentine feels that he has gained a kind of a prophet's power. The man who
was lying beside her could be Joseph himself in retrospect, or it could be Auguste,
for Valentine and Auguste seem to be fated to meet. The film catches many times
when the two pass by and still do not notice each other. But when Auguste finally
notices her, the look on his face is very serious. If Auguste was really an
incarnation of Joseph's dreamt life with a real lover, Joseph should be happy
to see them together on television after the ferry accident. In fact, he gives
a subtle smile when the camera focuses him at the end.
However, what would become of the relationship between Joseph and Valentine,
once Valentine comes back to Geneva? Insdorf suggests that the developing relation
between Valentine and Joseph might result in that of a father and daughter,
making reference to the fact of Valentine's father's absence and Joseph's isolated
life without family.(47) It is doubtful that their relationship
would grow in this direction, especially since Joseph regrets not having met
Valentine in his youth. That is, he perceives her as an impossible but ideal
lover, being highly aware of the age gap between them, which appears to be impossible
to transcend. After all, the best he seems to be able to do is to watch his
unaccomplished dream to be realised in his young self, Auguste.
Geoff Andrew uses the word "alter ego or younger self" to describe
the August's relationship to Joseph. Andrew is also one of the many critics
who suggests Joseph's role as "God." He argues that Joseph has been
playing "God" to some extent, because of his extraordinary knowledge
about the intersections of the people's lives around him through his eavesdropping
habit.(48) However, Andrew also restricts the extent of his
God-like powers, as Joseph is "neither omnipotent nor even omniscient."
He says that Joseph rather "seems to 'direct' people, as if they were characters
in a script which he then tweaks and turns into a finished film." In this
sense, he sees Joseph as "some kind of self-portrait by Kieslowski."(49)
Again in reference to Joseph, there is not only the argument of his doubled
relationship to Auguste, but also that of his rebirth through his encounter
with Valentine. Andrew notes that Joseph is "reborn" through "learning
to accept the mistakes and disappointments of his own past" by interacting
with Valentine,(50) and Andrew finds the proof of his "regeneration"
in his increasing gestures of warmth.(51) Insdorf not only
finds rebirth in Joseph but also in Valentine and Auguste. She observes that
the retired judge gains a second chance to be human through Valentine and that
Valentine and the younger double of the judge, Auguste, obtain a second chance
in the ferry crash to survive and "be 'reborn' together."(52)
It is suggested through Auguste and Valentine's unspoken exchange that their
relationship has the potential to develop, which seems to be celebrated by Joseph's
smile at the end.
As a concluding chapter, here I would like to mention the
connections between the three parts of the whole trilogy and also to examine
how the notion of doubleness contributes to link them together. Insdorf argues
that one of the penetrating themes throughout the trilogy is the subject of
second chance, as is mentioned in the above chapters.(53)
The idea of second chance is closely related to this notion of doubleness. In
fact, in a sense, the word, "double" can simply mean not being single
and/or alone, which may suggest another possibility, a "second chance."
In Red, Joseph is given a second chance to realise his dream through
Auguste. In Blue and in White, Julie and Karol recover themselves
and achieve love through their transformations after experiencing a disastrous
event: they start a new life by focusing on new aspects of themselves with which
to fight their way out of the predicament. Julie may not have survived if she
did not arm her vulnerability with an intentionally transformed self as a person
who is indifferent to the past. Karol manages to attain another face than the
one that he had worn as a hairdresser, enabling him to establish a fortune for
the sake of equality with his ex-wife. These films may show how fragile life
is but, at the same time, they seem to suggest that there is a great potential
within us of which we may not have been aware. If we look at things through
the perspective of doubleness, we may be able to access a clearer view of hidden
possibilities.
Insdorf regards the theme of sexual betrayal as a connection across the trilogy.(54)
In Blue, Julie finds out that her past husband had a mistress, and in
White, Karol discovers that his ex-wife has a partner. Julie and Karol
overcome the hurtful experience, while Joseph seems not to have been able to
transcend his past to begin a new life.(55) Auguste seems
to have the potential to establish a new life, when he finally meets Valentine
through the ferry crash, after his painful experience of witnessing his girlfriend
making love with another man. Perhaps it is Joseph's regret about his life that
motivates him to closely watch his double figure's life. Maybe he is a little
relieved in seeing his double lead a better life, and that is why he smiles
at the end when Auguste finally encounters Valentine because she represents
the woman whom Joseph himself never met in his younger days.
Andrew comments on the shared theme across the trilogy as follows: "Each
Three Colours film focuses on a solitary character or characters who are inherently
'good' but who have somehow, due to a traumatic change in their lives, lost
their way. . . A crucial step, for each, is to learn from the errors and disappointments
of the past, and then to set aside the past so that they may get on with living
out the present."(56) This theme may also extend from
Three Colours to The Double Life of Veronique, in which Veronique
gains wisdom that her heart condition would be fatal if she continued singing
through the mysterious connection with Weronika who died in the middle of her
career.
The recurring scene with an old person trying to put an empty bottle into a
recycle bin in Three Colours offers another connection with The Double
Life of Veronique. In the latter film, an old woman appears both in Poland
and in France. In Poland, Weronika sees a woman carrying bags and offers help,
but ends up not helping her. In France, Veronique finds a woman walking away
with a stick. In Red, the old person actually gains help in the trouble.
After Weronika, Julie and Karol fail to help the person, Valentine simply goes
towards the person and stretches her arm to put the bottle in the bin. This
gesture seems to be fitting as the concluding work of the Three Colours,
which unfortunately turns out to be Kieslowski's last film. Referring to these
scenes with an old person, Insdorf cites Kieslowski's comment on his intention
at the 1994 New York Film Festival: "All I want to say is, 'You can help
an old woman who is too old to get the bottle in.' It's just a reminder that
someday, we too might be too old to push a bottle into a bin."(57)
In this sense, the old woman can be seen as a double figure of each member of
the audience in a conditional mood, by showing a glimpse of what we might become
when aged. The connection extended across generations presented in Red
seems to find its extension in the whole trilogy and in The Double Life of
Veronique.
Finally, although this aspect could not be examined in this paper, there are
further strong connections within Three Colours and also between the
trilogy and Kieslowski's other films such as Camera Buff, No End,
Decalogue, and The Double Life of Veronique. Some of the characters
in these films are considered to reflect the life of the director himself strongly,
like a double. Moreover, Zbigniew Preisner, the musical director of many of
Kieslowski's major films has a double in the films, who is named, "Van
der Budenmajer." Therefore, Preisner connects different works of Kieslowski
not only through his music, but also this double figure who appears mischievously
in various films in different manners. Considering these, the idea of doubleness
seems to transcend the framework of Kieslowski's film world and to extend its
existence to the relationship between the film makers and their creations.
1.This paper is a revised version of a part of my master's thesis, "An Exploration of Doubleness through Kieslowski's Films and My Theatre Practice," which has been submitted to the Graduate School of Edith Cowan University in Australia. The Edith Cowan University Library holds a copy of the thesis.
Chapter 1 Introduction
2.Krzysztof Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski
xiii.
3.Kieslowski reveals that his initial motivation to study in
the Lodz Film School was to become a theatre director, but he had lost interest
in theatre by the time he succeeded in passing the entrance examination of the
School at his third trial. (Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 22-23.)
Later, he only once produced a play, which is named Curriculum Vitae
based on his film under the same title. According to Kieslowski, he found the
form of theatre totally unsuitable to his temperament. (Kieslowski, Kieslowski
on Kieslowski 62.)
4.Paul Coates, "Kieslowski and the Crisis of Documentary,"
Lucid Dreams 44.
5.Christopher Garbowski suggests perceiving the Witek at the
beginning of the film in the scene of the plane's explosion "as 'imagining'
two alternative lives for himself just before he dies." Christopher Garbowski,
Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue Series: The Problem of the Protagonists
and Their Self-Transcendence 26.
6.See Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 212.
7."Interview - Three Colours Trilogy." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_kieslowski_interview.htm.
8.See Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 212. See also
Geoff Andrew, The 'Three Colours' Trilogy 21 and Annette Insdorf, Double
Lives, Second Chances - The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski 139.
9.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 220.
Chapter 2 Three Colours: Blue
10.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski
212.
11.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 150.
12.Insdorf, 141, 169.
13.Cf. James M Wall, "Blue," The Christian Century
16 March 1994: 267.
14.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 216.
15.Wall, "Blue," 267.
16.Roger Ebert, "Blue," http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_blue_review.htm.
17.Wall, "Blue," 267.
18.Richard Corliss, "Blue," Time 142.24 6 Dec, 1993:
90.
19.Insdorf, 140.
20.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 216.
21.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 215-216.
22.Andrew, 28.
23.Julie's mother has a television in her room in her pensioner's
home. She seems to spend hours watching the television. (She is watching television
both times when Julie goes to her place.) She says, "I'm very happy here.
I have a television. You can see the whole world. Do you watch it, too?"
Julie explains to her mother that it is not her habit to watch television.
24.After finding about Patrice's girlfriend, Julie wonders
what would have happened if she accepted the file: "If I had taken it,
I would have known. And if I had burnt it, I would never have known." Here
is repeated again one of the most frequent themes in Kieslowski's films, "what
if. . .?"
25.Here are some examples of this kind of confusion in Kieslowski's
other films. At the beginning of Decalogue 3, Janusz in a disguise of
Saint Clause says Merry Christmas to Krzysztof in Decalogue 1 at the
doorstep of the apartment building. Krzysztof replies, "I didn't recognise
you." As we have seen already, Julie's mother repetitively confuses her
daughter with her sister. Referring to the scene at Lucille's strip bar, the
image of Julie on the television screen is not very clear, and it makes Lucille
to ask her if it is really Julie herself. In The Double Life of Veronique,
Veronique overlooks her identical double figure in Krakow when she is taking
a photo of her. She also does not recognise her in the photo development after
coming back to France, until Alexandre, her boyfriend, draws attention to it.
Even then, Alexandre confuses her with her double, Weronika.
26.Insdorf, 142.
27.Andrew, 88, note 14.
28.Insdorf, 149.
29.David Bromwich, "Blue," The New Leader
11 April 1994: 20-21.
30.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 147.
Chapter 3 Three Colours: White
31.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski
217.
32.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 217.
33.It is also revealed in the film that it is not only Karol
who seeks equality. For instance, in the scene where Mikolaj says that he does
not want to be killed any more after the blank shot, Karol tells him that everyone
suffers. Mikolaj admits it, and says that he wanted to suffer less. For him
to suffer as much as everyone else is not enough.
34.Insdorf, 164.
35.Andrew, 49.
36.His profession is actually an "image-changer,"
a hairdresser.
37.Insdorf, 165.
Chapter 4 Three Colours: Red
38."Interview - Three Colours Trilogy."
http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_kieslowski_interview.htm.
39.Andrew, 61.
40.Insdorf, 174.
41.Insdorf, 173-174.
42.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 146.
43.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 218.
44.Kieslowski, Kieslowski on Kieslowski 218-220.
45.Insdorf, 175. Kieslowski refers to the same point in his
Kieslowski on Kieslowski 218.
46.Insdorf, 178.
47.Insdorf, 177.
48.Andrew, 60.
49.Andrew, 61.
50.Andrew, 60-61.
51.Andrew, 64-65.
52.Insdorf, 169.
Chapter 5 Conclusion
53.Insdorf, 165.
54.Insdorf, 176.
55.Joseph tells Valentine that he has not been close to any
women ever since he was deceived by his first girlfriend.
56.Andrew, 68.
57.Insdorf, 181.
- Primary Sources -
Films:
Camera Buff. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski. Wielislawa Piotrowska, 1979.
35mm, 112min.
Blind Chance. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski. Jacek Szeligowski, 1981. 35mm,
122min.
No End. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski. Ryszard Chutkowski, 1984. 35mm, 107min.
A Short Film about Killing. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski. Ryszard Chutkowski,
1988. 35mm, 85min.
A Short Film about Love. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski. Ryszard Chutkowski,
1988. 35mm, 87min.
The Decalogue. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski. Ryszard Chutkowski, 1988.
"Decalogue 1." 35mm, 53min.
"Decalogue 2." 35mm, 57min.
"Decalogue 3." 35mm, 56min.
"Decalogue 4." 35mm, 55min.
"Decalogue 5." 35mm, 57min. Television version of A Short
Film about Killing (see above).
"Decalogue 6." 35mm, 58min. Television version of A Short
Film about Love (see above).
"Decalogue 7." 35mm, 55min.
"Decalogue 8." 35mm, 55min.
"Decalogue 9." 35mm, 58min.
"Decalogue 10." 35mm, 57min.
The Double Life of Veronique. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski. Leonardo de
la Fuente, 1991. 35mm, 98min.
Three Colours: Blue, White, Red. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski. Martin Karmitz,
1993/4.
"Blue." 1993. 35mm, 100min.
"White." 1993. 35mm, 100min.
"Red." 1994. 35mm, 100min.
Books:
Kieslowski, Krzysztof. Stok, Daniela, ed. and Trans. Kieslowski on Kieslowski.
London/Boston: Faber & Faber, 1993.
Kieslowski, Krzysztof; Piesiewicz, Krzysztof. Decalogue: The Ten Commandments.
Trans. Phil Cavendish; Suzannah Bluh. London/Boston: Faber & Faber, 1991.
---. Three Colors Trilogy: Blue, White, Red. Trans. Danuncia Stok. London:
Faber & Faber, 1998.
Interviews:
Darke, Chris; Macnab, Geoffrey. "Working with Kieslowski." Sight
and Sound 6.5 May 1996: 16-21.
Mensonge, Serge. "Three Colours: Blue, White and Red. - Interview with
Krzysztof Kieslowski and Friends about the Film Trois Couleurs -." Cinema
Papers no.99 June 1994: 26-32.
"Glowing in the dark." Sight and Sound 4.6 June 1994: 8-10.
"Interview - Three Colours Trilogy." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_kieslowski_
interview.htm.
"Interview with Binoche." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_blue_interview.htm.
- Other Works -
Films:
Ghost. Dir. Jerry Zucker, with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. Howard
W. Koch Jr., 1990.
Books:
Andrew, Geoff. The 'Three Colours' Trilogy. London: British Film Institute,
1998.
Coates, Paul. Lucid Dreams: The Film of Krzysztof Kieslowski. England:
Flicks Books, 1999.
Garbowski, Christopher. Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue Series: The Problem
of the Protagonists and Their Self-Transcendence. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1996.
Insdorf, Annette. Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski.
New York: Hyperion, 1999.
Articles:
Abrahamson, Patric. "Kieslowski's Many Colours." Oxford University
Student Newspaper, June 2, 1995. (http://density.com/metestudio/mete_kieslowski_many.
htm.)
Bentley, Michael. "Film Guide -- Red Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski"
Cineaste 21.1-2, 1995: 104.
---. "Film Guide -- White Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski" Cineaste
20.4, 1994: 64.
Berardinelli, James. "Blue." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_blue_review.htm.
---. "Red." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_red_review.htm.
Bromwich, David. "Blue." The New Leader 77.4 11Apr, 1994: 20-21.
Coates, Paul. "Exile and Identity: Kieslowski and His Contemporaries."
Before the Wall Came Down: Soviet and East European Filmmakers Working in the
West. G. Petrie and R. Dwyer, ed. Lanham: University Press of America, 1990:
103-114.
---. "Metaphysical Love in Two Films by Krzysztof Kieslowski." The
Polish Review xxxvii.3, 1992: 335-343.
---. "The sense of an ending: reflections on Kieslowski's trilogy,"
Film Quarterly 50 Winter 1996/1997: 19-26.
Corliss, Richard. "Blue." Time 142.24 6 Dec, 1993: 90.
---. "Dazzling Decalogue." Time; New York 152.4 27 July, 1998:
61.
---. "Red." Time 144.23 5 Dec, 1994: 93.
---. "Three Colors: White." Time 143.26 27 June, 1994: 71.
Cornell, Katharine. "The Cinema of Ambivalence: Recent Films from Central
and Eastern Europe." Cineaste 21.3 Summer 1995: 28-30.
Cunneen, Joseph. "Kieslowski on the Mountaintop: Ten Commandments from
the Late Polish Director." Commonweal 124.14 15 Aug, 1997: 11-14.
---. "Plus the Movie Event of the Year…Film Festival." National
Catholic Reporter 36.26 28 Apr, 2000: 22-24.
Ebert, Roger. "Blue." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_blue_review.htm.
---. "Red." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_red_review.htm.
---. "White." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_white_review.htm.
Frazer, Bryant. "Blue." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_blue_review.htm.
---. "Red." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_red_review.htm.
---. "White." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_white_review.htm.
Gliatto, Tom. "Red." People Weekly 42.24 12 Dec, 1994: 23.
Goodman, Mark. "The Double Life of Veronique." People Weekly
36.22 9 Dec, 1991: 20-21.
Harvey, Miles. "Poland's Blue, White, and Red." The Progressive
59.4 Apr 1995: 38-39.
Hift, Fred. "Red." Europe 344 Mar 1995: 47.
---. "White." Europe 341 Nov, 1994: 47.
---. "White." Video Age International 14.8 Oct 1994: 22.
Hinson, Hal. "Red." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_red_review.htm.
Hoberman, J. "Epilogue" The Village Voice. 41.14 2 Apr, 1996:
59-60.
---. "Urban Legends." The Village Voice New York; 45.12 28
Mar, 2000: 113-115.
Holden, Stephen. "Diving the Ways of God and Man: 10 Stories Rooted in
Commandments." The New York Times; New York; 9 June, 2000: E16-19.
Horton, Andrew. "Between Spielberg and Tarkovsky: Searching For a Cinematic
Middle Ground." Film Criticism 21 Winter 1996/1997: 2-7.
Insdorf, Annette. "An Affectionate Look at Krzysztof Kieslowski's 'Three
Colors. . . White." Film Comment 33 Mar/Apr 1997: 46-8.
Iordanova, Dina. "Eastern European Cinema." Journal of Film and
Video; Englewood; 51.1 Spring 1999: 56-76.
Johnson, Brians D. "Blue." Maclean's 107.3 17 Jan, 1994: 61.
---. "Red." Maclean's 107.48 28 Nov, 1994: 85.
Johnson, Robert. "Burdens of Identity in The Double Life - The Double
Life of Veronique Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski." The Christian
Century 109.6 19 Feb, 1992:196.
Kauffmann, Stanley. "Kieslowski's Commandments." The New Republic
222.26 26 June, 2000: 26-27.
---. "Red." The New Republic 211.25 19 Dec, 1994: 26-27.
---. "A Short Film About Killing." The New Republic 214.6 5
Feb, 1996: 26-27.
---. "White." The New Republic 210.24 13 June, 1994: 32-33.
Kehr, Dave. "Three Colors." Film Comment 30.6 Nov/Dec 1994:
10-17.
Kelly, Richard. "Wage warrior." Sight and Sound ns 10.2 Feb
2000: 22-24.
Kissen, Eva H. "The Double Life of Veronique." Films in Review
43.5-6 May/June 1992: 195-6.
Klawans, Stuart. "Red." The Nation 259.20 12 Dec, 1994: 778-780.
---. "Three Colors: Blue." The Nation 257.21 20 Dec, 1993:
778-780.
---. "White." The Nation 259.4 25 July, 1994: 137.
Kornatowska, Maria. "Polish Cinema (Cinemas in Transition: A Special Section
on the Cinemas of Eastern & Cental Europe)." Cineaste 19.4 Fall
1992: 47-50.
Lundeen, Kathleen. "Pumping Up the World With Cinematic Supplements."
Film Criticism 24.1 Fall 1999: 60-96.
Marsh, Christopher. "Krzysztof Kieslowski: Some Thoughts." http://www.colorado.
edu/StudentGroups/fbolex/april96/kieslowski.html.
McKinnon, Arlo. "Preisner: Requiem for My Friend." Opera News
63.12 June 1999: 60.
Menashe, Louis. "Lisbon's International Encounters in Documentary Cinema."
Cineaste 23.3 Summer 1998: 55.
Ottenhoff, John. "Kieslowski: Polish Roots, European Vision." The
Christian Century 113.26 11-18 Sep, 1996: 850.
---. "Shades of Truth: Encountering Kieslowski's 'Three Colors'."
The Christian Century 113.26 11 Sep, 1996: 848-853.
Pawelczak, Andy. "Red." Films in Review 46 Mar/Apr 1995: 60-1.
---. "White" Films in Review 45 July/Aug 1994: 54-5.
Perlmutter, Ruth. "Testament of the father: Kieslowski's The Decalogue."
Film Criticism 22.2 Winter 1997/1998: 51-65.
Perlmutter, Ruth; Perlmutter, Archie. "A Testament to Krzysztof Kieslowski."
Film Criticism 21 Winter 1996/1997: 59-61.
Poks, Malgorzata. "Kieslowski Bez Konca." Historical Journal of
Film, Radio and Television 15.2 June 1995: 321-322.
Rabinowitz, Carla Barringer. "St. Paul, Kieslowski, and the Christian Framework
of 'Trois Couleurs.'" http://www.petey.com/kk/kiesdis3.txt.
Ragland, Ellie; Wright Elizabeth. "The Double Life of Veronique:
An Inquiry Into the Existence of Woman." Psychoanalytic Psychology
10.3 1993: 481-486.
Ramsey, Nancy. "Kieslowski's Reasons for Living." New York Times;
New York, N.Y.; 21 May, 2000: 24-25.
Revel, Sara. "An Analysis of How the Metaphysical is Created through the
Cinematography in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours Trilogy." http://www.petey.com/kk/kiesdis4.txt.
Romney, Jonathan. "Three Colours Blue." New Statesman & Society
6.274 15 Oct, 1993: 34.
---. "Three Colours: Red." New Statesman & Society 7.328
11 Nov, 1994: 33.
Sampaio, Gerard. "Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours Trilogy." http://www.
petey.com/kk/kiesdiss.txt.
Simon, John. "White." National Review 46.13 11 July, 1994: 62-63.
Taubin, Amy. "Death Be Not Proud -- A Short Film About Killing Directed
by Krzysztof Kieslowski." The Village Voice 40.52 26 Dec, 1995:
70.
Taubin, Amy. "Film -- A Short Film About Love Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski."
The Village Voice 41.1 2 Jan, 1996: 52.
Travers, Peter. "Controversy in Three Colors." Rolling Stone
702 23 F2b, 1995: 80.
Wall, James M. "Blue." The Christian Century 111.9 16 Mar,
1994: 267.
---. "Blue." The Christian Century 112.9 15 Mar, 1995: 283-284.
---. "Immutable Truths: Inescapable Commandments." The Christian
Century 113.32 6 Nov, 1996: 1059-1060.
---. "Krzysztof Kieslowski: I'm So-So." The Christian Century
113.27 25 Sep, 1996: 883-884.
---. "Polarized, Satirized." The Christian Century 113.27 25
Sep-2 Oct, 1996: 883-884.
---. "White." The Christian Century 111.9 16 Mar 1994: 267.
Weinstein, Harvey. "In Memorium - Krztsztof Kieslowski: To Smoke and Drink
in L.A." Premiere, June 1996. http://www.petey.com/kk/smkdrnk.txt.
Wilmington, Michael. "The Long Decade's Journey into Light ('The Decalogue'
by Krzysztof Kieslowski)." Film Comment 36.2 Mar/Apr 2000: 9-10.
"Blue." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_blue.htm.
"Cannes Film Festival: Asian Challenge." The Economist 331.7865
28 May, 1994: 88.
"La Double Vie de Veronique." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_veronica.htm.
"La Double Vie de Veronique." http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~zbigniew/
Kieslowski/Kfeatures.html#Weronika.
"Films - Three Colors: Red Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski." The
Nation 259.20 12 Dec, 1994: 738-739.
"Krztsztof Kieslowski." The Economist 338.7958 23 Mar, 1996:91.
"Picks & Pans - White Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski." People
Weekly 42.2 11 July, 1994: 14.
"Red." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_red.htm.
"White." http://dencity.com/metestudio/mete_white.htm.
"Zbigniew Preiser." http://www.preisner.com.
"Zbigniew Preiser." http://apollo.lpg.fi/preisner/info.html.
Dictionary:
"Double," "Doubleness," "Dualism," "Duality."
The Oxford English Dictionary. 1989 ed.
"Double." Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English.
Tokyo: Kaitakusha, 1974 ed.
"Dualism." The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Ed.
R.E.Asher. Pergamon Press Ltd, 1994.