Blue may be the most popular of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Trois Couleurs trilogy, made during the renowned Polish filmmaker’s final years in France. But the following two installments, White and Red, are an insight into his expansive body of work in other periods. Blue is closest stylistically to Blind Chance and No End, some of the more lyrical and meditative films he made while in Poland with its study in grief. While the influence of the era of French cinema extends far beyond Juliette Binoche’s performance.
While the subsequent two films are also in French, with largely Francophone casts, they bear more resemblance and pay homage to prior parts of his career. A sendoff to a legacy of filmmaking spanning two sides of Europe.
White is a callback to the greyscale simplicity of Kieślowski’s early Polish works, choosing to highlight content over colour. The gentle, soft greys are easy on the eye here, instead of indicating some painful absence. A floaty, dreamlike wedding sequence showing the amount of light in the characters lives that can be given or taken.
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Unlike Blue and Red, which highlight their titular colours through bursts of bright saturation, White is all color at once, and none, and can best be shown through light. We see sunlight reflecting on puddles to create the brilliant paleness, rainwater glistening in front of a white-veiled bride, using water, so commonly associated as blue, to reflect and refract light instead of color.
It is the antithesis of a comedy. One in which the loneliness of Paris is amplified through Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski)’s struggle to grasp the reality of his own divorce. The story could easily be a screwball comedy through how often it changes. But instead, the deep sadness imbued by the heartbreak of Karol’s divorce. Or the orders to kill a friend who does not have the heart to commit suicide himself. And that final longing look from Dominique (Julie Delpy) that signals the reignition of the romance whose end sparked Karol’s journey to Poland in a suitcase. All prevents it from even being dark comedy.
A tale of two lovers broken by their choice to leave each other, they are made equal as they are both allowed to cry over the circumstances they bring upon themselves. Karol is left at the beginning, which he sees as rather cruel. But he is just the same as she is when he refuses to help an old man in Paris recycle a bottle. He even smiles cruelly as he walks away, an equality shown in the former couples struggle with empathy.
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Red acts as a spiritual companion to The Double Life of Veronique. The very film that transitioned Kieślowski’s career from Poland to France during its runtime. Both starring Swiss actress Irène Jacob. Her performance as the character of Valentine here is so gently understated and wondering, looking at the world wide-eyed, and with hope and love. Just the same as a viewer may look at Double Life’s sparkling fairytale magic.
In the earlier film, the character of Weronika, also played by Jacob, watches an older woman struggle with her shopping in the same way that each sequence of a bottle failing to be thrown away occurs. And shouts from her window, clad only in her underwear, that she will help her. We never see the result of this in Double Life, as Weronika’s story ends too soon.
But in Red, Valentine is the first of anyone in the trilogy to help. It is the climax of the trilogy, the first small, entirely independent act of kindness to show a character interact with the world without the focus on themselves.
In Blue, Binoche’s protagonist is too wrapped in her own grief to help the woman reaching up for a too-high recycling bin. She believes that her own struggles make it so she is not obligated to help. And that is the representation of freedom, the first spirit declared in the motto of the French republic.
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In White, the problems of the old man (the gender changes here to match Karol, to make them equals) are seen as a destruction from his. So he does not help so that they can be equal in that they struggle through their day. Only Valentine helps, because she is a representation of the principle of fraternity, and spreads this kindness herself. This fraternity is also her finishing Weronika’s unfinished business, potentially making her another doppelganger like the women of Double Life. But most importantly showing charity without motive.
The beauty of that final scene that brings all those we have seen throughout the trilogy comes in its validation. We are shown those that are important in the earlier films, paired up together. And Valentine is allowed the love that she deserves from a neighboring student.
Did we follow these characters because they ended up on that boat together in the end? Or is it a coincidence to show the interconnectivity of human life? Neither answer is shown as superior, because it is left up to us to decide if we believe in this magic of coincidence.
Blue is often seen as the color of sadness, while Red is seen as the color of love. Red is not a traditional love story, but how we realize when we are deserving of love. Where Valentine is able to see in the end the love she deserved, and was warned about in another’s dream, waiting beside her.
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White is sometimes that colorless flatness, shown in the cool marble statues, but is more often the light that pours through darkness. The moment of acknowledgement that stops one from craving the release of death. Or the return of affection from a lover one thought was long lost.
As Kieślowski’s final films, they’re a fitting swan song. Though the auteur doesn’t have one critical consensus as to what his masterpiece is, Dekalog is often highlighted for its morality plays told through the lives within one building, set to the Christian Ten Commandments.
Trois Couleurs uses the principles of France’s motto to create something that is not nationalistic, but critical of the ways in which we follow these doctrines. And how we manipulate their meanings to support our own selfishness. Ending the trilogy on Valentine, and her random act of kindness in contract to the world, shows a belief in the people, not the nation. And makes the trilogy a message to improve instead of a work of blind patriotism out of France. like it may come off as through its branding.
While the films may bear the colors of the French flag, they are instead about Europe’s reunification. A hand out-stretched from Poland to France, to forgive the sins of history, and to raise the flag of cinema over the now unified nations.
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