57 replies to this topic

[Thom]

When it comes to Kieslowski, I have a hard time stopping with the mention of Blue, White and Red.  It would seem that all of his movies are a woven grand adventure.

I know you're a fan of HEAVEN, as well, which I saw this summer and really liked. Just realized that, though HELL is going to be in this year's Vancouver International Film Festival, I'll be out of town when it's showing. Hell!

That sucks!

[Thom]

Winter/Spring 1996. 

These three films literally changed my life and the way I view all art in general.  Seeing the entirety of The Decalogue on the big screen at Facets in the same year was enough to seal my fate.  Yes, Asher, you are right about me.  I love these boards, these people, these movies.  But reading the thread I know what I've been missing: a recent visit to Anything Kieslowski.  I need to correct this, and soon.  Perhaps since it's been ten years Veronique belongs somewhere in my film queue.  Speaking of which, Doug -- can't somebody SOMEWHERE do something about getting this gem distributed?

When it comes to Kieslowski, I have a hard time stopping with the mention of Blue, White and Red.  It would seem that all of his movies are a woven grand adventure.

-s.

It is funny you should metion revisiting Veronique, I have it waiting for me, on VHS. I have been looking forward to this viewing for years as it is one of the few Kieslowski's I haven't seen.

Edited by asher, 12 September 2005 - 09:30 AM.

[Doug C]

Stef, Artificial Eye in the UK should be releasing Veronique on DVD sometime soon.

L'Enfer played here at TIFF this week, and Darren and my friend Candace saw it and liked it.

[Clint M]

This was the best thread I found for the topic - so here goes:

DeepDiscountDVD is having a sale on a lot of titles - Buy 2, get 1 free. Among those is all three of the Kieslowski Three Colors trilogy.

They have free shipping, so you get all 3 films for around 18.00. (You don't get the box, but all 3 discs have all of the special features of the box set.)

Link to DDD.

Edited by Clint M, 15 October 2005 - 10:07 AM.

[theoddone33]

Stef, Artificial Eye in the UK should be releasing Veronique on DVD sometime soon.

I missed this when it was posted last time, but I have to say that this is the best DVD news I've heard in a long time, possibly ever.

Now if I can get someone to put out The Conformist on DVD, I'll be able to rest.

[John]

I'm resurrecting this thread since I just caught Blue last night for the first time in a couple of years, again reminding me why I love Kieslowski so much, and simultaneously causing me to wonder how I could have not come back to such fertile ground earlier.



On this viewing, I found myself attentive to the "chance" meetings and experiences Julie has in her journey from life to death and back to life again. These include a variety of encounters with individuals, a gust of wind blowing her door shut, a man playing a tune on a flute, and Julie seeing her own picture on a television screen. With such a great degree of this so-called randomness, surely Kieslowski is highlighting these signpost moments on Julie's journey, thus revealing something to us about the way this world works - that in spite of the suffering it doles out, there's also a kind of benevolence that sits right along with it.

Yet I was struck that the benevolence only seems to come upon the scene once Julie makes her break from life as she used to know it. In seeking a descent into nothingness and forgetfulness (becoming her mother), she becomes nearly overrun with these chance encounters or moments. It's as if through the circumstances of life, Julie receives this benevolence or grace, which works to bring her back to life. I can't help but wonder if any of this would have happened had she covered her suffering over with the busyness and noise of normal life.

A couple of questions I am wondering about: What are the circumstances that give Julie ears to hear? Is it purely a work of benevolence from outside her? Does she engage in certain practices that help this process along, however unknowingly she does it?

Edited by John, 29 July 2006 - 06:22 PM.

[jon_trott]

Okay, I'll respond with my first film comment here. First, I herebye disinvest myself of any misconcieved "expertise" by others re movies. What I like I like, though, and...

And that is why I just had to throw a comment in about "Blue." I've seen all three of these. And liked all three, very much. In fact, I told my wife it is about time for us to (once again) rent them and do a triple-feature.

But blue is my favorite of the three. The story is beautifully told, the images... ah. The one that sticks in my head is there, I think, because it was filmed perfectly: that coffee cup, and the ultra-closeup of the pure white sugar cube as it is slowly lowered into the cofee and the first drop of dark brown is absorbed by the sugar... I have my own interpretations of what such an apparently meaningless image means. But I'm playing 'em close to the vest, because I'm in here with a bunch of MOVIE people.

Okay, now all you geniuses tell me why I liked that image so much. Maybe after I watch it again I'll be able to tell you.

Hehehe.

Blessings,
Jon

[DanBuck]

You clearly want some sugar... baby.

[Doug C]

Jon, thanks for chiming in here--Blue is also my favorite of the three. Maybe you liked that scene because it's not only a beautifully captured moment--one that would ordinarily be as mundane as anything--but the camera's focus and music and the emotional intensity of the film makes that moment almost iconic in regards to Julie's life of isolation. She's as focused on the act of putting sugar into her coffee as a doctor in surgery, blocking out everything else that surrounds her. It's a very powerful moment, and "life" seeps into hers and overwhelms it, dissolves it, just as her tragedy has overtaken her. And yet, ultimately, she's just putting sugar in her coffee; there's no grand symbolism or obvious reading, making the moment linger uncertainly and evocatively in our thoughts...and hers.

[goneganesh]

And yet, ultimately, she's just putting sugar in her coffee; there's no grand symbolism or obvious reading, making the moment linger uncertainly and evocatively in our thoughts...and hers.

What matters is the Hitchcockian precision of the image, and thus of the moment. It's a psychological and emotional use of suspense. Suspense is a trick to increase our investment in these's figures of light on the screen. We are suddenly aware of time, seconds (callibrated precisely by Kieslowski by his search for the right cube) ticking away. The "bomb under the table" is Binoche.

[Overstreet]

I wrote a chapter about Blue and The New World to serve as a sort of culminating chapter in my film book. In both films, a woman must find her way through pain, loss, and betrayal and determine how to approach future relationships, responsibilities, and risks. I chose these two because they've been as personally significant and rewarding as any films I've seen.

Examining Blue, I chose to focus closely on the sugar cube moment, although there are so many other moments that would have served just as well.

Does it suggest that eventually she will let the grief well up within her to the point that she'll surrender to it?
Does it suggest that the music she's listening to is filling her up, ministering to some deep need?
Or is it about absorbing the immediate moment, part of her attempt to attain "liberty" from her past, her pain, her responsibilities.

I also love the moment when the camera focuses on the cup and saucer and spoon. We cannot see Julie, but we can guess that this long shot means she is staying at her table for a long time, absorbed in the music. After all, we can tell by the shifting shadows that hours are passing. We can tell by the way nothing is disturbed that the waiter has not taken her dishes. But we can also see that she hasn't refilled her cup or touched her spoon. She is transfixed by the music floating in from the sidewalk outside.

[Peter T Chattaway]

FWIW, ISTR reading (or seeing?) an interview with Kieslowski where he talked about how absolutely precise the timing of that sugarcube shot needed to be. Anybody here remember the reference?

[jon_trott]

Jon, thanks for chiming in here--Blue is also my favorite of the three. Maybe you liked that scene because it's not only a beautifully captured moment--one that would ordinarily be as mundane as anything--but the camera's focus and music and the emotional intensity of the film makes that moment almost iconic in regards to Julie's life of isolation. She's as focused on the act of putting sugar into her coffee as a doctor in surgery, blocking out everything else that surrounds her. It's a very powerful moment, and "life" seeps into hers and overwhelms it, dissolves it, just as her tragedy has overtaken her. And yet, ultimately, she's just putting sugar in her coffee; there's no grand symbolism or obvious reading, making the moment linger uncertainly and evocatively in our thoughts...and hers.

I really need to watch it again! (I'm jonesing for the movie now). But as I recall it, it was seeing that cube, yes, as her own condition, or at least what she wanted it to be. Absolutely pure, crystalline, and formed in a perfectly symmetrical way. But the muddy, shapeless coffee invades the sugar's absolutes, transforming (and I suppose being transformed) by them.

Now did I really think all that right then? Nah. But I did later on. And Doug the coffee cup and spoon did also play into it. But it all went back for me to that cube and the coffee and the perfection of their intersection.

Okay, I'm done. Must go to bed.

[The Invisible Man]

FWIW, ISTR reading (or seeing?) an interview with Kieslowski where he talked about how absolutely precise the timing of that sugarcube shot needed to be. Anybody here remember the reference?

Yes, Kieslowski discusses it in the "masterclass" included as one of the extras on the Region 2 DVD edition of Blue. He talks about the precise timing of the scene, and his search for a five-second sugar cube lol.

Regarding its meaning, he says this:

Why the obsession with close-ups in this film? Quite simply, we are trying to show how the heroine perceives the world. We are trying to show that she focuses on small things, on things which are close to her. She doesn't care about things which are further away from her. She is trying to limit her world, to limit it to herself and her immediate environment. There are several details like this in the film.

We show a close-up of a sugar cube soaking up coffee to show that she is not interested in anything outside: She is not interested in other people, their business, in the man who loves her and who has found her after a long search. She's not interested in anything at all. Just the sugar. She concentrates on it in order to be able to discard other things.

Edited by The Invisible Man, 31 July 2006 - 03:35 AM.

[Doug C]

But as I recall it, it was seeing that cube, yes, as her own condition, or at least what she wanted it to be. Absolutely pure, crystalline, and formed in a perfectly symmetrical way. But the muddy, shapeless coffee invades the sugar's absolutes, transforming (and I suppose being transformed) by them.

Wow, I like that; it's taking the isolation/saturation metaphor even further.

But of course none of this is textual so while many of us wouldn't have articulated its poetic meaning the first time we saw the scene, I think most of us were aware of the moment's poignancy on a subliminal/intuitive level. Such is Kieslowski's artistry.

And GG, I love your comparison to Hitchcock and the odd suspense of the scene. It's as if we ask ourselves, "How much can Julie absorb and when will she utterly dissolve?"

Edited by Doug C, 31 July 2006 - 10:07 AM.

[Tony Watkins]

I have just finished watching Red again, and once more am completely blown away by Kieslowski's film-making.

I think I was even more struck than previously about the apparently random coincidentality of the world he creates. It's obvious in all three right from the start, of course, but there was a greater intensity of awareness of it this time.

Maybe it's because I've recently been writing a short section on the use of coincidence in films for my book. It struck me when I was writing it that there are two types of coincidence in fictional narratives. First, there are justified coincidences - occurences which have at least some measure of motivation from within the story. They may be unlikely events, but they are not impossible since they are the result of chains of cause and effect just as much as the non-coincidental events. However, we are either shown two chains of events coming together, or the preparatory causes are hidden from us yet we can tacitly accept that such an event could conceivably happen (perhaps because of 'fate'). Second, there are unjustified coincidences - genuinely random or utterly improbable events (infinite improbability drive). These are often a lot of fun, though they can be intensely annoying. I suspect that they reveal something significant about the writer's worldview. (Clearly the fact that these are invented occurences makes them entirely non-random at one level - they are deliberately created events, but you know what I mean by genuinely random).

Now with Three Colours, the coincidences all felt to be of the first type - until the very last scene in which KK ties together the three films. It seemed extraordinary to have this situation unfolding on the judge's television and I had to stop and remind myself that it is not at all unlikely that the couple from each film should be rescued in order from the same disaster. It feels exceedingly improbable because we've just sat and watched their stories. But those stories are only linked by the fact that they were in the same place at the same time. This time it seemed to be Kieslowski's way of underlining just what a profoundly important role coincidence has played.

[Tony Watkins]

By the way, what is it with Kieslowski and old people putting bottles into bottle banks?

[Peter T Chattaway]

Pat Graham at the Chicago Reader Blog asks if Blue is "art" (or "aahhrrt") or "kitsch":

My own bete noire in this--well, obviously just one of many--is Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue (playing at the Siskel Film Center this week), or at least the acclaim it conventionally enjoys, in which artful aspiration serves as more or less a cover for the class-bound attitudes that suffocate the tale.

Can't help wondering if the fact that these films were distributed by Miramax plays any part in this.

[Tony Watkins]

Steve Innes has written three articles for Culturewatch on the trilogy. The first two (on Blue and White) are available now, and the third will be published later this week. They're very insightful explorations into Kieslowski's masterpieces - in particular looking at the themes of grace and redemption.

[The Invisible Man]

I have just finished watching Red again, and once more am completely blown away by Kieslowski's film-making.

"Red" is the one that I really struggle with. I have moved beyond merely dismissing science fiction films as unchristian and have now started turning my nose up at anything that sniffs of postmodernism.

Edited by The Invisible Man, 14 March 2007 - 06:33 AM.