BLUE (1993)
Director: Krzysztof
Kieslowski
Screenplay: Krzysztof
Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Every so often, I find that I have to makeup an excuse to go back to Kieslowski, probably my all-time favorite filmmaker, and go through his great “Three Colors Trilogy,” of “Blue,” “White,” and “Red”. The names come from the colors of the French Flag, which stand for “Liberty/Freedom” “Equality,” and “Brotherhood/Fraternity” respectively, but just like “The Decalogue,” Kieslowski’s ten-films about the Ten Commandments, he explores these themes in quite unusual ways through unusual characters, women primarily, who fascinate us, because we have no idea what they’re about to do, or what’s going to happen next. Yet, his films exhibit a poetic beauty and the visions of a filmmaker who would make incredibly odd and wondrous choices.
In “Blue,” for example, which has dozens of examples of fascinating
choices, the most infamous occurs in the beginning when Julie, (Juliette
Binoche) is in a hospital after a car accident has killed her husband and
daughter, we have an extreme close-up of Juliette Binoche’s eye, so close, that
we see the reflection of the doctor informing her of the deaths. This is not a
CGI effect, this is an actual shot, and an actual reflection from Juliette
Binoche’s eye, made with a very rare 200mm lens. Who thinks of a shot like
that, and there’s dozen’s of shots and editing techniques used like that in all
his movies, maybe especially in “Blue.”
After her husband’s death, a famous
classical composer who’s final unfinished piece was for the concert for the
Unification of Europe, she makes a conscience decision to completely abandon
her life as she knew, getting rid of almost all her worldly and even personal
belongings and moves into a cheap apartment on a side of town as far away from
the world she knew as she could. She goes swimming a lot, she becomes
fascinated by a local sidewalk flautist, who’s outside the coffee place she
goes. Yet, there are still loud outbursts of music that appear to be stuck in
her head that she can’t get out of, and often they’re accompanied by,...- well, a black screen, but presumably they're memories that she's repressing to the point where not even we can see them. She’s made a choice of
solitude and abandonment of her past life, trying to erase all memories and
shades from her past.
This is until she finds out something about her husband
she didn’t know, and even then, her behavior is peculiar and intriguing. In
fact, she’s one of the most mysterious characters in all of cinema, by far more mysterious then the other two heroines played by Julie Delpy and Irene Jacob, in the second and third
films of Kieslowski’s trilogy. There’s also issues floating around about the
authorship of her husband’s music, as his old partner, Olivier, (Benoit Regent)
has begun trying to finish the work. Previously, we saw Julie sleep with Olivier in order to see
if she can feel anything, but she does not, and that’s when she goes on her
inner journey. I used to think that was the last catalyst to make sure it was the right decision for her to go on this strange segregationally of hers, but now I wonder if perhaps, she was hoping to not feel anything, 'cause she wanted to do this.... It's frustrating that we never know the precise answers, but frankly I, and Kieslowski, wouldn't have it any other way.
Each movie looks a little different because he used a different
cinematographer for each film, and naturally, the color blue is filtered is all
through this movie, as well as a circularity motif that continues to go through
the three movies that eventually come together, if arbitrarily but
fascinatingly. "Blue" is an analytical unraveling of whether one can truly achieve
personal liberty and freedom, which is the true key to this trilogy, the
achievement of the personal as opposed to the typical broad ideal of words like
liberty, and what one will do to achieve it, and what one does when they have
gotten it.
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