Analysis of the opening of Kieslowski’s film, Trois Coleurs: Bleu
By Matthew Sharpe
April 1999
MSharpe@ratcliffe.leics.sch.uk

Krzysztof Kieslowski was a famous polish director who made a trilogy of 
famous films, called Trois Coleurs. The three films are Trois Coleurs: Bleu, 
Blanc and Rouge. The Trois Coleurs films all have different tones, shown 
mainly by the style of camera shots and angles, and the colours they are based 
on. Bleu is a cold, hard colour, and it is reflected in the feeling of the film. The 
first ten minutes of the film Trois Coleurs: Bleu is about a family going 
somewhere in a car. In the family is a Mother and Father, and a small girl. The 
Father, it turns out later, is a famous musical conductor. The car crashes into a 
tree, because brake fluid leaked out of the brakes. The Father and small girl die 
in the accident, but the Mother survives. She goes to hospital, where she 
recovers and has to watch the funeral on TV.

The first ten minutes of the film Trois Coleurs: Bleu is split into two main 
sections; before the crash, and in the hospital. In the first section, Kieslowski 
builds up tension using various devices. He uses many close-ups and distorted 
shots. He also rarely shows the family’s faces, because he does not want to let 
the viewers get to know them, because they are about to die. In particular, in the 
shot of the brake fluid dripping out of the car, the small girl runs into the shot, 
but although it would be the normal thing to do, Kieslowski does not pull focus 
onto the girl. The shot of the brake fluid also helps to build up the tension, 
because the viewers know that something is going to happen, but it is not 
immediately clear what it is. The car then drives off and it cuts to a shot of a boy 
playing with a game at the side of the road. There is a focus pull to show the car 
with the family. The boy thumbs up to the car to hitch a ride. The car passes him 
by. The boy wins his game and smiles. Suddenly, there is a loud screech and an 
explosion. The boy’s expression changes as he turns to look at the car. The 
crash is not shown. This is unusual because normally in Hollywood movies the 
crash would be shown dramatically with probably a huge explosion and a 
fireball. Instead, there is a long shot of the car as it falls back from the tree and a 
beach ball bounces out. The shot lasts for at least nine seconds. The next shot is 
even further away, and the boy runs towards the car. Unexpectantly, the camera 
neither zooms, nor tracks toward the car, but stays stationary. The boy drops his 
skateboard half way to the car and continues running until he reaches the car. It 
is an unusual shot, because half of it is just the sky. It shows the car as a small, 
almost insignificant, object in the middle of the shot, like death small compared 
to life surrounding it. It also makes the viewer feel useless, because the viewer 
can do nothing except watch from a distance. The shot lasts for more than 
twenty seconds, which is an extremely long and unusual amount of time for one 
still shot. It then fades to black to show time passing.

The second section is set in the Hospital, after the car crash. The first shot is an 
extremely unusual shot, and it is not clear what it is to begin with. In the middle 
is a feather on the mother’s pillow, and it is moving with her breathing. It is 
zoomed in on the feather, so the depth of field is shortened and out of focus. The 
shot is a point of view shot of the mother, and it is blurred to show she is 
confused and almost unconscious. The only sounds are her breathing and 
ambient sounds in the background. A man walks into the room and into the shot. 
There is no focus pull to show him, which is unusual. The next shot is a macro 
focus of the woman’s eye with a reflection of the man in it. This shot is 
disconcerting because it is intruding into the person’s privacy during mourning. 
There is a shot of the woman’s face, which is the first time the viewer sees the 
woman. The shot is excellently lit, with shadows moving on her face. 
Kieslowski must have taken ages on the shot to make it look good, which shows 
he is a talented artist as well as director. The doctor asks the woman if she 
knows that her husband is dead. Her face tells us she is sad, and she asks if 
Anna, the girl, died. The man says yes and the camera zooms into her face, 
again intruding into her privacy and sadness.

The next shot begins with a loud smash as a bottle crashes out of a window. 
Then the woman is shown in an empty corridor, and she hides as a nurse comes 
to check what the noise was. The nurse goes into a room and the camera tracks 
and pans with the woman and stops with the woman framed behind window. 
There is a close-up of a medicine cabinet then it tilts to show the pills in bottles 
in the cabinet. The nurse hears a noise in the room. Cut to the woman as she 
grabs a bottle of pills. The camera pans with her as she walks over to the 
window to the corridor. The window is framed with the woman behind it. She 
eats a whole bottle of pills but then spits them out into her hand and looks up at 
the nurse. There is a shot of the nurse looking at her. Shot of the woman as she 
goes over to the door to the nurse. Shots of the woman and the nurse. The 
woman spits out the pills and gives them to the nurse. She says sorry.

This shows that she is deeply upset with the loss of her daughter and her 
husband, to the point that she is so upset that she wants to end her life. It is quite 
uncomfortable for the viewer to be so intrusive into her sadness, especially with 
all the close-ups and big close-ups. It is disorientating because of all the unusual 
shots which are so long, and the shots which are out of focus.

The woman has to watch the funeral of her daughter and husband on a small 
TV, which is even more upsetting for her because she cannot be there to say 
goodbye. There are close-ups of her and the TV screen. She touches the screen 
with her finger where her daughter’s coffin is. There is another close-up of her 
face and a single tear rolls down her face, again intruding into her sadness and 
grief.

Throughout the section of the film there are two examples of iconography; 
games, and the colour blue. The game that the boy was playing by the side of 
the road, and the beach ball that bounced out of the car seem insignificant things 
which people do compared to the matter of life and death that the car crash is. 
The film is called Trois Coleurs: Bleu because the film is, in a way, based on the 
colour blue. It is a sad film, and blue is a cold, sad, lonely colour.

The first section of the film is split into two parts, before the crash, and after the 
crash. Before the crash, Kieslowski builds up tension leading up to the car crash 
and the death of the Daughter and the Father. After the crash, in the hospital, 
Kieslowski uses various devices to disorientate the viewer, by using lots of 
close-ups and having shots which last for long lengths of time, and by intruding 
into the woman’s grief at the loss of her daughter and her husband.