| |
 |
|
|
Movies Forum Index » International Movies Forum » _Blue_
Page 1 of 1
|
| Author |
Message |
| septimus |
 Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2003 6:58 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
I doubt Kieslowski intended it that way, but if one were to
be trendy and read _Blue_ as a metaphor about cinema, Emmanuelle
Riva's Alzheimer-infected widow would represent quite a few of
today's movie critics fixated on isolating cinema from its roots
and alienating it from other artistic and human endeavors.
Trapped in a glass house, her memory gone, Riva has contact
with the outside world only through transient, moving images.
Sad to say, much of what I have been reading about movies has
the same feel to it: cold, anti-emotion, anti-narrative,
anti-identify-with-protaganist rantings which take for granted
that cinema is first and foremost about cinema itself.
Or maybe it is Julie who is Art Cinema -- a fugitive from the
classical forms, who discards her memory and heritage, who cowers
in her own apartment, terrified of helpless victims of crime
pounding at her door outside. She may still want to touch her
daughter's coffin on an electronic screen (though, pointedly,
not her husband's), but every time she turns on the TV she sees
dead people and old folks falling into the abyss. Fortunately,
the virtuoso, overpowering ending of _Blue_ decisively repudiates
this pessimism. The thematic, emotion, and stylistic richness of
_Blue_, indeed its *completeness*, make you wish Kieslowski is
still around to wrestle movies away from their impoverishment at
the hands of film geeks.
I have never appreciated _Blue_ as a stand alone film as much as
I should have. I had the chance to watch it twice recently. It
begins with the close-up image of a rear tire of a vehicle -- that
shot sticks in one's mind. But I have forgotten two exquisite
early scenes: the Alfa Romeo whipping through traffic (they must
be in a hurry), Anna leaning against the rear window, watching
the receding dark tunnel. Cars that drop behind them are dimly
lit like jelly fish, or ghosts. And then the crash scene, with its
stunning composition: the wrecked vehicle almost straight up a tree
in the dead center of the frame, a lone figure running at it in the
pale pre-dawn light, a country road meandering in the foreground to
the left. At once surrealistic and painterly in the best landscape
tradition, its eerie beauty (and self-effacing brevity) far surpasses
purely formalistic work like Alexander Sokurov's depressing _Mother
and Son_. (Or is sticking to formalism a symptom of depression, as
Wim Wenders suggested?)
The next shot is a reflection off Juliette Binoche's dark pupil:
a man appears in a lab coat, announcing the death of her family. It
is her entry in _Blue_ and the film's second beginning. Thereafter
she is in all scenes but one. Her passive subjectivity becomes the
focal point of _Blue_. It is a subjectivity that leaves no room for
the mysticism of _No End_ and _Double Life of Veronique_. Receding
tunnels and ghostly lit cars, images that inspire supernatural
thoughts, are excised from the film's vocabulary. From then on every
confrontation is painstakingly functional, material, curt, bare
bone. In an interview Kieslowski mused about the Prime Mover of
events in our lives -- whether it was coincidence, man's will, or
divine intervention. It is evident that _Blue_ explored blind
chance and the accidental; willpower and acts of God were left
to _White_ and _Red_.
Yet Slawomir Idziak's mysterious blue light leaves ripples on the
cold hard surface. Light flickers on Binoche's eyelids when she
returns to the mansion. She is looking through her late husband's
scores, and as each musical note comes into focus it is played full
blast. The lines at either side, out of focus, blur into accompanying
strings. _Blue_ visualizes and illuminates classical music like
a laser beam. This innovation fuses and invigorates the two great
art forms in an exciting new way. But the reflection from the
swimming pool beckons, and she slams shut the piano, killing
the melody. One chapter of her life closes and another has begun.
She will renounce her former self and dedicate herself to the
river Styx. Forgetting is hard work, just like swimming.
To Kieslowski, connectedness is the natural state of things.
Nothingness, in contrast, is a deliberate, negating act of
the mind; it is existential freedom. The portrayal of this
freedom in _Blue_ is exemplary: startling bursts of Priesner's
composition drown out unwanted memory while Julie swims and
swims and looks for a new balance. Nothingness is what Julie
will cling on to now, she tells her Alzheimer-stricken mother.
The mother doesn't recognize her but is clear-headed enough
to rebuke her abstract word play. Do you have enough money,
she asks. You must hold on to something.
The rest of the film deals with how she hangs on to her nothingness
and how, uninvited, the world hangs on to her. She refuses to get
involved in evicting her neighbor Lucille, only to see Lucille
turn into her intrusive best friend. She hangs out in Julie's
apartment, but when she mentions a childhood memento similar to
Anna's blue "mobile," Julie has a panic attack. Crossing physical
boundaries is one thing; emotional isolation depends on an illusion
of uniqueness, on a refusal to empathize. Lucille has threatened
that privilege and senses it too, although she only mentions Julie's
(not unrelated) social privilege. You are not the type that people
dump, she says.
One night Julie is locked out of her apartment. Instead of asking for
help she sleeps on the stairs. There she is, in troubled sleep,
leaning upright against the metal railing in the dead center of
the frame, a winding staircase in the foreground, a blue halo over her
fluttering eyelids. All in all, not so different from a wrecked car
climbing halfway up a tree herself. Does she remember, does she
dream? The boy who ran towards the car wreck calls her up, tries
to return the metal cross her husband gave her. She has forgotten
about it and doesn't want the souvenir. Perhaps she has really
become a positivist now, she never dreams.
As the boy recounts her husband's dying words she sobs. Or she
appears to, until she looks up and reveals she is really laughing.
Those words are the punchline to a joke. So it is impossible
to completely understand or identify with Julie after all. _Blue_
sets us up to get inside her skull all film long and then pulls the rug
from under us. Collectively speaking, the trilogy, like _Double Life_
and _Dekalog_ before it, does a lot of that. It forces the audience
to peer through multiple and constrasting windows of the soul. If
there is one complaint about _Blue_ it is its arthouse speciousness.
But then _White_ comes along and deconstructs Privilege, and all is
well and balanced in Kieslowski's universe.
The discovery of her late husband's infidelity jerks Julie out of
her doldrums. She searches the courtrooms for his lawyer mistress.
She sees her husband's signature cross around the woman's neck, and
the world turns. Thereafter everyone is on trial, defending
his/her life so Julie can make sense of hers. The dialog veer ever
closer to cross examinations. Will you hate me now. Do you love
me. I love you. You are good and generous. That is what you want
to be. If I have burnt them I would never have known. Yes. Are
you alone. Long pause. I'm coming ... Cowriters Kieslowski and
Piesiewsicz (a one-time lawyer) loved courtroom scenes, but the
terse script of _Blue_ is a radical departure that seldom gets the
credit it deserves. Their words give _Blue_ much of its distinct
flavor.
Yet words never do justice to the finale of _Blue_. (At least mine
don't.) As Priesner's Corinthian chorus soars, Julie and Olivier's
love-making gives way to Antoine clutching his cross in the pre
dawn hours. (Does he set his alarm to the car crash to honor the
dead?) Riva closes her eyes, Sandrine's unborn child kicks into
life on a ultrasound video screen, Lucille has an epiphany, and
all of them collapses into the image of Julie's dark eyes, are
reflected in those eyes, seem to emanate from them. Julie takes
in the multitude and mystery of these newfound connections and weeps,
but a contended smile slowly forms on her face. It is a fitting end
to an extraordinarily film. It is also comforting to remember that
so long ago _Blue_ dares to long for the unification of Europe, not
the Balkanization of the arts. It strives for fusion of words, music,
and cinema, and a glorious completeness that encompasses form, style,
brilliant philosophical and psychological insights, and above all, a
emotionally overpowering humanistic story. Jerzy Stuhr, as Kieslowski's
alter ego, turns the camera on himself in the last frame of _Camera
Buff_. As a director Kieslowski never made that mistake. His films
soar and lead far beyond darkened rooms with big screens. When
I walked out of the end credits of his films I didn't feel I would
watch movies the rest of my life; I always wanted to (in any way
possible) do great things the next day.
Hopefully, that is the highest tribute one can give to a work of art. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| |
|
Page 1 of 1
All times are GMT - 5 Hours
The time now is Sat Aug 30, 2008 3:30 am
|
|