Krzysztof Kieslowski's final masterpiece.
When an artist paints, he never knows when his work is truly complete. There aren't any directors alive today that I can call a true master of their work, but perhaps year on after they have passed, after their work perfectly comes to an end, I will have changed my mind. However, without a doubt, the Three Colours Trilogy is the work that placed Krzysztof Kieslowski within the realm of the maestros.
After Kieslowski announced that he would retire and that he thought literature could achieve what cinema couldn't, an artist that laid aside his art, after only two years, death caught him when he was only 56. Many years after his death, never publicly recognised to be on the level that he deserves, with names such as Bergman, Fellini, Wells and so on. He was a revolutionary in his own way with the Dekalog and of course this last work, the Three Colours Trilogy. I will go in depth and review each of the three: Blue, White and Red, and then review the trilogy as a whole.
Before I get started on Blue, I have to first say, the three films standing as individual works are definitely not masterpieces by themselves. Don't get me wrong, they are still very good, but not absolutely brilliant.
!SPOILERS!
Anyways, Blue is a story of Julie (played by Juliette Binoche), who is the wife of an acclaimed composer. The film starts with a tragic car crash which kills her husband and her child, followed by grief which led her to deny everything in her old life. Literally, as she destroys the Concerto For Europe, sells their property and moves to an anonymous street in the middle of Paris. But as time goes on, her past catches up with her as she discovers another copy of the Concerto and she is the only one who can finish it, and she finds her husband's mistress who is pregnant with his child. Despite the build up of her fear and solitude, she is forced to face her past in a new way. This new life directed her to a new found freedom in life which is also a kind of non conventional anti-freedom in a way, as most of the film is focused on how the tragedy forced her to restrict her own freedom.
Unlike the trilogy as a whole, which I will get on later, Blue is schematic, which weakens the plot. However, the pure emotional power injected into Binoche's character and the camera work, especially the part where she was in the hospital still recovering, makes this film an intense and moving tragedy.
The second part of the trilogy, White, is perhaps the easiest to navigate in terms of how the story plays out, but plays out with a complex flavour emotionally. It felt like a kind of comedy, but an anti-comedy, pessimistically hopeful (If that makes sense in a way). I think this film actually didn't play out as well as the other two despite probably being the most intricate of the three, the subject matter and the setting makes it so difficult to avoid the bitterness. White, the story of a Polish hairdresser Karol Karol (played by Zbigniew Zamachowski) who was sued and divorced by his wife Dominique (played by Julie Delpy), his life spirals out of his hands which forces him to resort to hiding in a suitcase to get back to Poland. He lands himself a shady deal over some land and establishes his own company which sends him into wealth. Still obsessive over Dominique, he sets up a ruse which tricks her into Poland. The film ends with her locked up in prison and Karol going to get her out (without spoiling too much of the plot here). He reaches a kind of equality with her through a sort of twisted revenge.
As I have mentioned earlier, White is without a doubt the least stylish of the three films, but intentionally without style, portraying not only Karol's home but Kieslowski's home. As the truly ridiculous story unfolds, the non-stylistic style made the story the truest in the trilogy. Of course, this is with help of the superb performance by Zamachowski from a damaged reject to the successful entrepreneur, but also the portrait of a pale and dangerous post-communist Poland.
Finally, comes the concluding film, Red. This is the story of Valentine (played by Irène Jacob), who is a student/model living in Geneva. She accidentally runs into a golden retriever, leading her to meet the owner, a retired judge living a reclusive life. The judge's life is slowly revealed as the film goes on, a striking similarity is shown between Valentine and her always absent lover, and the parallel young law student who has just become a judge and lost his love. The question in every person's mind, notwithstanding the fact that they are 40 years or so apart, but perhaps in another lifetime, Valentine and the old judge may have fallen in love, considering, cosmologically, man's existence is nothing but an instant so far.
The trilogy ultimately ends with a big accident as a ship going to England sinks under unknown reasons and we see Julie and her old friend, Karol Karol and Dominique, and finally Valentine and the young judge, the only survivors of the accident. Unlike the relationships in the other two films, this one unravels by chance, in circumstances well outside of each other's control. But like the other two, Kieslowski manages to almost miraculously put so much emotion and tension onto the screen unlike any other could achieve. Kieslowski's work is nothing of miraculous nature, but rather meticulously put together and so well written which puts most other directors to shame.
The three films all share an ominous yet cathartic ending until the final scene of the trilogy where the three stories come together and finally can be understood as a whole. As Kieslowski said himself, "I think we have shown a way of thinking a little bit different than film normally does. In film, every moment is clear, but in literature everything becomes clear when you finish the book." I have no choice but to agree with him after seeing his work, a visionary who redefined what cinema could be.
Many of you may be wondering why I still have not mentioned what the role of the colours play in this trilogy, that is if you have read other reviews or materials concerning this trilogy. That is because I have decided to leave it to the last thing I talk about since I was not familiar with the theme myself when I first watched all three films. To some of you who are familiar with your french history, you will know that it was in 1958 where the motto "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" was established and written into the Constitution, however, first appearing during the French Revolution, the motto has often been associated with the colours of the french flag going in the order of blue, white and red. This symbolism only seems to be helpful to interpreting the film, going back and thinking about Julie in Blue, she gains the liberty after losing her husband and her child, although painfully, she gets the chance of starting a new life. Karol in White goes through great trouble to make money and gets even with Dominique, the theme of equality. Valentine and the judge in Red have a strange fraternity of souls that jumps across time and space to what they both could imagine, what life could have been.
The trilogy really does a great job highlighting how much choice we can have as individuals but at the same time, metaphysically, how little we are in control of our choices. Just as I have mentioned earlier, Blue is tragedy that brings around freedom, White is a comedy achieved by dishonesty, just these two, Red is a romance that never had a chance to happen in this timeline. So many filmmakers, when writing stories, base their character development on the plot, as if the plot is what defines who they are, but what makes Kieslowski's work so real is how he gives the choices to his characters. It's a celebration of lifelines and choices which are made and unmade.
I feel like I have stretched out this review quite a bit now, so, finally I would like to end this with another thought. Writing this now, as I have just finished school, where I have practically lived for the past five years, it has only been two weeks, I am already seeking a whiff of revisiting things I have been through from these years. No one else can see the shadows casted by my former self, perhaps one day, when I go back, I will see myself leaving the school in the shape of some other kid. I will not be surprised if I would have just missed myself by just a touch.
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