QCinema 2016, part 3: Three Colors: Blue is an emotive symphony
It's gradually becoming a tradition of QCinema International Film Festival to showcase a trio of films by a particular world cinema auteur. In 2014, it was South Korean director Park Chan-wook and his trilogy of violent and exacting revenge-driven tales ("Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance", "Oldboy", "Lady Vengeance"). Last year, it was French helmer Gaspar Noe and his trio of nihilistic-cum-misantrophic provocations ("Irreversible", "Enter the Void", "Love"). For this year's edition (which ran from Oct. 13 to 22), the director in focus was Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski (whose 20th death anniversary is being remembered this year) and his Three Colors trilogy, which deals with the emotional lives of certain individuals in contemporary France. The trilogy is called as such because each of the films represents a color and its corresponding meaning on the French national flag. Unlike some trilogy where one film can't do without the other or each must be viewed in relation to the other, the films in Kieslowski's trilogy can actually stand on their own. Though in my opinion, it will be fully rewarding if all the films are viewed in the order they are presented, in correspondence with the sequence of the three colors on the French flag. This kind of viewing will also let us see the themes of interconnectedness, chance, coincidence and intangible grand design that had always been a preoccupation of Kieslowski. No other filmmaker has infused seemingly incidental encounters and trickily missed opportunities with such mysticism and transcendence. Without intending to sound blasphemous, Kieslowski is like playing God in his cinematic universe.
One of the films in the trilogy that I saw in the recently-concluded festival was "Blue" (1993), which serves as the first installment (and the first color on the French flag). The color represents liberty on the national emblem, which was one of the primary ideals of the French Revolution (though this is another matter altogether). How does such ideal relate to the film's context? The main character in the film is Julie (portrayed by Juliette Binoche, sublime, mysterious and resplendent), who has just lost her husband, a well-renowned composer and daughter in a car accident. The tragic incident is already depicted right at the film's start, which is one of the most dreamy opening sequences that I've seen in cinema, as Kieslowski presents a sequence of part-abstract, part-elegiac shots of images that hint at the tragedy about to happen. Without a doubt, this takes a major toll on the woman's life, making her a "prisoner" of her own suicidal attempts, apathy, anger and detachment. In lesser hands, this study in grief could easily downgrade to a melodrama of hysteria and kitsch. Thankfully, in the master's hands, it becomes a moment after moment of transcendence and catharsis.
Immensely aided by the director's frequent cinematographer Slawomir Idziak's predominantly blue-hued images, the film is essentially a one whole symphony of Julie's grief-stricken emotive journey. Such journey, just as in a symphony, has its corresponding diminuendo (for instance, where Julie submerges herself in a fetus-like position in a crystal-blue swimming pool) and crescendo (for example, where Julie gives the necklace with a small cross to the teenage boy who witnessed the car crash). And whenever Julie and her husband's composer-friend (who has a secret affection for her) go over the notes of the deceased's still-unperformed and somewhat-unfinished composition, the film lets it to be "heard" by us, as if a chorus is being played from the heavens. That the film is like this is because the soundtrack is actually organic to it, that is, it was composed by Zbigniew Preisner (another frequent Kieslowski collaborator) before "Blue" started being shot, so that the film can move according to the music's rhythms. And as in a symphony, there's not one extraneous note - in this case, the "notes" represent the people who are related to Julie or whom she encounters - for all of them are integral in the whole of Julie's journey. This interconnectedness is beautifully summarized towards the film's end, in a "symphony of faces" where each of the characters (the teenage boy, the neighbor who's a paid-sex worker, Julie's mother who's stricken with Alzheimer's and is residing in a home for the elderly, her husband's pregnant mistress and Julie herself) is having their kind of emotive epiphany.
Thus, "Blue" is a richly-detailed and imaginatively-constructed film about one woman's self-transfiguration, from being a prisoner of her own grief to being able to attain a kind of emotional liberty. (At one point in the film, Julie dismisses family and friends as "traps".) After detaching herself from everyone else, Julie is able to eventually reconnect herself to everyone else once again - but not after undergoing some kind of self-healing and -realization. As in the ten-part "Dekalog" (another magnificent epic about interconnectedness), Kieslowski (along with screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiwicz, another frequent collaborator) situates certain lofty and metaphysical ideals in the private lives of certain individuals. The result is a masterpiece that is grand as it is intimate, evocative as it is familiar.
Needless to say, "Blue" is anchored by the performance of its lead actress, who packs an emotional wallop in the film. This is the kind of acting showcase that's in the same caliber with Ms. Binoche's other portrayals - like in Andre Techine's "Rendezvous", Louis Malle's "Damage", Michael Haneke's "Code Unknown", Bruno Dumont's "Camille Claudel, 1915". It's a complex characterization, straddling the lines of being affecting, suggestive, irrational, morbid and raw. Many a times that it can tease audience expectations, inviting us to think over the rationale behind and the justification for her actions. It's a performance that's rewarding to behold. A perfect match for an equally rewarding film.
(Juliette Binoche is a woman on the verge of emotional liberty in Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colors: Blue")
One of the films in the trilogy that I saw in the recently-concluded festival was "Blue" (1993), which serves as the first installment (and the first color on the French flag). The color represents liberty on the national emblem, which was one of the primary ideals of the French Revolution (though this is another matter altogether). How does such ideal relate to the film's context? The main character in the film is Julie (portrayed by Juliette Binoche, sublime, mysterious and resplendent), who has just lost her husband, a well-renowned composer and daughter in a car accident. The tragic incident is already depicted right at the film's start, which is one of the most dreamy opening sequences that I've seen in cinema, as Kieslowski presents a sequence of part-abstract, part-elegiac shots of images that hint at the tragedy about to happen. Without a doubt, this takes a major toll on the woman's life, making her a "prisoner" of her own suicidal attempts, apathy, anger and detachment. In lesser hands, this study in grief could easily downgrade to a melodrama of hysteria and kitsch. Thankfully, in the master's hands, it becomes a moment after moment of transcendence and catharsis.
Immensely aided by the director's frequent cinematographer Slawomir Idziak's predominantly blue-hued images, the film is essentially a one whole symphony of Julie's grief-stricken emotive journey. Such journey, just as in a symphony, has its corresponding diminuendo (for instance, where Julie submerges herself in a fetus-like position in a crystal-blue swimming pool) and crescendo (for example, where Julie gives the necklace with a small cross to the teenage boy who witnessed the car crash). And whenever Julie and her husband's composer-friend (who has a secret affection for her) go over the notes of the deceased's still-unperformed and somewhat-unfinished composition, the film lets it to be "heard" by us, as if a chorus is being played from the heavens. That the film is like this is because the soundtrack is actually organic to it, that is, it was composed by Zbigniew Preisner (another frequent Kieslowski collaborator) before "Blue" started being shot, so that the film can move according to the music's rhythms. And as in a symphony, there's not one extraneous note - in this case, the "notes" represent the people who are related to Julie or whom she encounters - for all of them are integral in the whole of Julie's journey. This interconnectedness is beautifully summarized towards the film's end, in a "symphony of faces" where each of the characters (the teenage boy, the neighbor who's a paid-sex worker, Julie's mother who's stricken with Alzheimer's and is residing in a home for the elderly, her husband's pregnant mistress and Julie herself) is having their kind of emotive epiphany.
Thus, "Blue" is a richly-detailed and imaginatively-constructed film about one woman's self-transfiguration, from being a prisoner of her own grief to being able to attain a kind of emotional liberty. (At one point in the film, Julie dismisses family and friends as "traps".) After detaching herself from everyone else, Julie is able to eventually reconnect herself to everyone else once again - but not after undergoing some kind of self-healing and -realization. As in the ten-part "Dekalog" (another magnificent epic about interconnectedness), Kieslowski (along with screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiwicz, another frequent collaborator) situates certain lofty and metaphysical ideals in the private lives of certain individuals. The result is a masterpiece that is grand as it is intimate, evocative as it is familiar.
Needless to say, "Blue" is anchored by the performance of its lead actress, who packs an emotional wallop in the film. This is the kind of acting showcase that's in the same caliber with Ms. Binoche's other portrayals - like in Andre Techine's "Rendezvous", Louis Malle's "Damage", Michael Haneke's "Code Unknown", Bruno Dumont's "Camille Claudel, 1915". It's a complex characterization, straddling the lines of being affecting, suggestive, irrational, morbid and raw. Many a times that it can tease audience expectations, inviting us to think over the rationale behind and the justification for her actions. It's a performance that's rewarding to behold. A perfect match for an equally rewarding film.
(Juliette Binoche is a woman on the verge of emotional liberty in Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colors: Blue")
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