SPOILERS
The colour blue has an interesting history, culturally and etymologically. In the past there did not seem to be a word that described this colour, with Homer in The Odyssey using the descriptors wine-dark for the sea and bronze for the sky. With its use in dyes, blue went from one of the rarest colours - denoting aristocracy and imperialism - to the most popular and used in man-made objects in a short span of time. And in spite of this, many cultures still don’t have a word for blue, with countries like Japan and Wales using the same word for both green.
A change in the position of class and a struggle for self-identity. Blue therefore is the perfect colour to title this story, the first of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours Trilogy. Of course the general knowledge is that Blue symbolises the colour’s most political connotation in the French Flag, meaning “liberty”, but Kieślowski is smart enough to take the word liberty away from an exclusively political meaning. Three Colours: Blue asks questions that are in many ways universal: What does it mean as a human being to have liberty? To be free? What is the difference between being yourself as a person and excluding yourself from others? And when we have problems so far in ourselves, in our psyches, how much can an outside world truly help?
When philosophical conversations come up about solipsism, the first idea used to support the notion is that we experience the world individually from our own senses. Three Colours: Blue is one of the most sensual films I have ever experienced. With a stripped down narrative of a women coming to terms with the loss of her husband and daughter, the audience primarily experiences sense rather than plot, inner rather than outer action.1 Kieślowski's notes in a behind-the-scenes documentary that accompanies the Artificial Eye DVD release that he would cut to moments of small sensations, such as a sugar cube going into coffee, as that was the most predominate sense to Julie in that moment.
1 As a way to highlight this, Julie's first house is laid bare, almost barren. When she instigates sexual intercourse with Oliver, probably the most sensual of human acts, "They took everything. Only the mattress is left", practically a meta-commentary by Kieślowski on the film's own construction.
This formality permeates the whole film, the first shot of the film being that the tyre of the car Julie and her family are in. In a literal sense, this introduces the character of Julie before there is a character seen to be introduced.2 When we do "see" our protagonist for the first time, we see her watching another, her eyes as a lens that the audience sees through. In this first shot of our protagonist, before she attempts to rid herself of the outside world (be that first in her attempted suicide, and then in her seclusion), we see the inherent problem of complete isolation, especially in cinema; her senses, her means to be isolated must always be constituted by an audience watching and experiencing things with her. She can never be truly alone, as she is always seen. Always sensed.
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| Our Introductory shot, and our "introductory" shot. |
After such a terrible tragedy in the loss of her husband and child, Julie is "liberated" from societal responsibilities, but in the worst manner possible. Juliette Binoche's performance in Blue is extraordinary, as her facial expressions consistently seem to be on the cusp between stoicism and the last moments of repression before the inevitable cry (she in fact only cries twice in the film). This performance is never mistaken for apathy, in fact Kieślowski rejects that notion. Julie's only real act in the movie that could be considered apathetic, in which she does not sign a petition to kick an exotic dancer named Lucille from her apartment complex, is whether inadvertent or not an act of understanding and empathy. Despite the character's best attempts to escape from other people, to be a single liberated being onto herself, her helpful and empathetic side prevents, whether it being helping or "completing" her late husband's last piece of music (more of which I come to later).
Consistent visual images add to an idea that despite Julie's attempts to "fall", to escape into herself, she always has a way of coming back. In a very intentional order we first see on a television that of someone skydiving, but as the film progresses that image of falling without a means back changes to a bungee jumper; someone who falls but is still in some way pulled back up. The final image on the mother's television (the Alzheimers stricken mum played wonderfully by Emmanuelle Riva) is that of a tightrope walker, neither falling nor being forced back up, but someone struggling to carry on, to maintain a balance; we don't see whether the walker succeeds at the end. But even whilst Kieślowski uses visual symbols relating to Julie's persona, his presentation still always questions whether the visual is something to take fully into account, or something that can only give you some information. And this question of certainty is not just in the visuals...
Sight is not is not the only sense that cinema can manipulate, but sound. And its in the incorporation of Zbigniew Preisner's beautiful score that the movie shows much of its thematic and emotional intent. We never once see Julie place a finger onto a musical instrument to produce sound; the only time she is seen to touch a piano it is to close the lid on her fingers. But in spite this music is constantly tied to her actions, whether that be important character interactions being punctuated by a repeating motif on a black screen, or the same notes written down on paper being the same notes played on the soundtrack as she throws the paper into the back of a garbage truck. At one point, to emphasise how much the sense of music defines her character, Kieślowski does the most confident thing a storyteller in the visual medium can do; he makes the image blurred, incomprehensible.3
On the ever reliable Wikipedia, it says that the final "sequence" is that of the montage that shows the affect that Julie's actions has had on people's lives, whether it be giving a place to live to her late husband's mistress, or her mother still there in the nursing home. Of course, that is not is not the movie's "final" sequence; a storyteller like Kieślowski does not waste the economics of the credits on ending the story on the final "image". Instead the movie ends with a performance of that final piece over blue backed titles, as the unfinished concerto concludes with the sound of a flute solo, the piece of which Julie heard being played in the street by a busker.4 Just as it is never made clear how involved Julie was in the original construction of her husband's pieces, it is never made clear whether the flute piece is an invention of the buskers, or if he discovered the piece that Julie threw away. In terms of a message about the construction of art, it is the kind of collectivist conclusion that would have made Roland Barthes salivate, but in terms of the story the flute solo is a perfect summation of Julie's character arc. The culturally important piece of high brow music is finished by including the tune of a busker on working/middle class street. And a woman that once tried to enforce her "liberty" by being isolated from other, in the end shows the audience her true declaration of intention, her authorship, by putting the works of multiple people together. Julie experiences a change in the position of class and a struggle for self-identity; like the colour that gives the film its title.
We can try to isolate ourselves from others, from a dark and oppressive outside world, but we always be dragged back into the collective by our inherent human sense. Like feeling the sun on your face, finishing an important piece of music, or sitting in a darkened room and experiencing the sights and sounds of a masterpiece like Blue.
Next Story of Film: I make a shameful confession; I have not at any point in my life watched Casablanca. That is about to change.
Also: I couldn't watch Three Colours: Blue without considering the others. In my new series, The Completionist, I will watch films that I feel are crucial to watch that are not on my list. Stay tuned for posts on the whole Three Colours Trilogy.
Note
Consistent visual images add to an idea that despite Julie's attempts to "fall", to escape into herself, she always has a way of coming back. In a very intentional order we first see on a television that of someone skydiving, but as the film progresses that image of falling without a means back changes to a bungee jumper; someone who falls but is still in some way pulled back up. The final image on the mother's television (the Alzheimers stricken mum played wonderfully by Emmanuelle Riva) is that of a tightrope walker, neither falling nor being forced back up, but someone struggling to carry on, to maintain a balance; we don't see whether the walker succeeds at the end. But even whilst Kieślowski uses visual symbols relating to Julie's persona, his presentation still always questions whether the visual is something to take fully into account, or something that can only give you some information. And this question of certainty is not just in the visuals...
Sight is not is not the only sense that cinema can manipulate, but sound. And its in the incorporation of Zbigniew Preisner's beautiful score that the movie shows much of its thematic and emotional intent. We never once see Julie place a finger onto a musical instrument to produce sound; the only time she is seen to touch a piano it is to close the lid on her fingers. But in spite this music is constantly tied to her actions, whether that be important character interactions being punctuated by a repeating motif on a black screen, or the same notes written down on paper being the same notes played on the soundtrack as she throws the paper into the back of a garbage truck. At one point, to emphasise how much the sense of music defines her character, Kieślowski does the most confident thing a storyteller in the visual medium can do; he makes the image blurred, incomprehensible.3
On the ever reliable Wikipedia, it says that the final "sequence" is that of the montage that shows the affect that Julie's actions has had on people's lives, whether it be giving a place to live to her late husband's mistress, or her mother still there in the nursing home. Of course, that is not is not the movie's "final" sequence; a storyteller like Kieślowski does not waste the economics of the credits on ending the story on the final "image". Instead the movie ends with a performance of that final piece over blue backed titles, as the unfinished concerto concludes with the sound of a flute solo, the piece of which Julie heard being played in the street by a busker.4 Just as it is never made clear how involved Julie was in the original construction of her husband's pieces, it is never made clear whether the flute piece is an invention of the buskers, or if he discovered the piece that Julie threw away. In terms of a message about the construction of art, it is the kind of collectivist conclusion that would have made Roland Barthes salivate, but in terms of the story the flute solo is a perfect summation of Julie's character arc. The culturally important piece of high brow music is finished by including the tune of a busker on working/middle class street. And a woman that once tried to enforce her "liberty" by being isolated from other, in the end shows the audience her true declaration of intention, her authorship, by putting the works of multiple people together. Julie experiences a change in the position of class and a struggle for self-identity; like the colour that gives the film its title.
We can try to isolate ourselves from others, from a dark and oppressive outside world, but we always be dragged back into the collective by our inherent human sense. Like feeling the sun on your face, finishing an important piece of music, or sitting in a darkened room and experiencing the sights and sounds of a masterpiece like Blue.
Next Story of Film: I make a shameful confession; I have not at any point in my life watched Casablanca. That is about to change.
Also: I couldn't watch Three Colours: Blue without considering the others. In my new series, The Completionist, I will watch films that I feel are crucial to watch that are not on my list. Stay tuned for posts on the whole Three Colours Trilogy.
Note
2 The tyre going down a strict road is a great metaphor for the character as a whole; the car is an item associated with liberty, with freedom, but that freedom can only be maintained in a strict and encompassing parameter.
3 At the same time the image blurs, Julie says that the piece should "remove the trumpets". Here again the removal of the clarifying image is tied to sound; either the removal of a main instrument removing a sense of clarity, or the focus on the abstracts of music making the characters lose themselves from the physical world.
4 A seemingly strange or innocuous decision, but the final important sound of the flute starts on the credit of the Cinematographer rather than the Director that precedes it, nor the Composer that follows it. Is this a final means to accentuating the mirroring between image and sound, even at the point when the movie is meant to be over?
Also, unless I remember incorrectly, the flute is the only instrument in the movie that we shown in front view actually being played, adding more significance to its performance off-screen at the end of the film.
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