I watched all three of Kieslowski’s Three Colors films this weekend, thanks to Criterion’s lovely Blu-ray box set. My personal favorite was Red. Irene Jacob has a magnetism about her beyond just being beautiful. She’s so honest, uncontrived, and she portrays her character in Red with such grace. White is a great film, but it was more plot-driven than the other two and doesn’t resonate like they do as a result. The most surprising and “fun” of the three. Blue is raw, unnerving, a story of a shattered heart that learns to keep living despite the pains of her past. There’s raw heart muscle aching throughout it. One common thread between them all are characters coming to terms with their lives. They all experience situations which try them in some way, that challenge their assumptions and understandings about their world and force them to become something else, and something more. That’s another thing that’s great about these films: they all ultimately end with their characters being happy, but Kieslowski makes his characters earn it, so it never feels like a fairy tale. It’s well known that Kieslowski and his writer Piesiewicz aimed to make the trilogy representative of the three colors of the French flag: liberty (blue), equality (white), and fraternity (red). But I feel like they snuck something else in there, too. Blue is a film predominantly concerned with a character’s past, White with the main character’s present circumstances, and Red with its character’s future. In this regard the films leverage their symbolic nature to greater effect than would naturally result from a trilogy of works ostensibly about liberty, equality, and fraternity. It’s an extra layer of depth that raises them from simply well-executed cinematic experiments in symbolism to true works of art. If you rent them or buy the set, be sure and check out the bonus materials. There’s some eye-opening stuff in there that really added to my appreciation of the films. Next up on my Netflix queue, Kieslowski’s Decalogue. Ten one-hour films. I’m looking forward to them.

I watched all three of Kieslowski’s Three Colors films this weekend, thanks to Criterion’s lovely Blu-ray box set. My personal favorite was Red. Irene Jacob has a magnetism about her beyond just being beautiful. She’s so honest, uncontrived, and she portrays her character in Red with such grace. White is a great film, but it was more plot-driven than the other two and doesn’t resonate like they do as a result. The most surprising and “fun” of the three. Blue is raw, unnerving, a story of a shattered heart that learns to keep living despite the pains of her past. There’s raw heart muscle aching throughout it.

One common thread between them all are characters coming to terms with their lives. They all experience situations which try them in some way, that challenge their assumptions and understandings about their world and force them to become something else, and something more. That’s another thing that’s great about these films: they all ultimately end with their characters being happy, but Kieslowski makes his characters earn it, so it never feels like a fairy tale.

It’s well known that Kieslowski and his writer Piesiewicz aimed to make the trilogy representative of the three colors of the French flag: liberty (blue), equality (white), and fraternity (red). But I feel like they snuck something else in there, too. Blue is a film predominantly concerned with a character’s past, White with the main character’s present circumstances, and Red with its character’s future. In this regard the films leverage their symbolic nature to greater effect than would naturally result from a trilogy of works ostensibly about liberty, equality, and fraternity. It’s an extra layer of depth that raises them from simply well-executed cinematic experiments in symbolism to true works of art.

If you rent them or buy the set, be sure and check out the bonus materials. There’s some eye-opening stuff in there that really added to my appreciation of the films.

Next up on my Netflix queue, Kieslowski’s Decalogue. Ten one-hour films. I’m looking forward to them.