ST. PAUL, KIESLOWSKI, AND THE CHRISTIAN FRAMEWORK OF "TROIS COULEURS" Carla Barringer Rabinowitz E-mail: prabinow@tiac.net 6/04/97 Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Blue" contains what must be one of the most astonishing "aha!" moments in the history of movies. In the final frame, as Julie's reconnection to her own humanity is shown by her ability, at last, to weep, we hear in the background the final verse of the chorale to the great concerto which she may or may not have composed in her husband's name. The final word in the chorale is "AGAPE": the Greek word used by the Apostle Paul for the world- embracing love of the human soul in the presence of God. At that moment, the entire movie snaps into focus. (If you miss the moment, you can wait 60 seconds for the final credits, in which Kieslowski actually credits St. Paul.) All right, for some of us the snap may take until we watch ourselves brushing our teeth in the mirror the next morning. But a snap it is. The text for the chorale, and in fact for the entire movie, is the 13th chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. Two dissertations posted on the Cine Kieslowski website provide the words to the chorale. But the words given are an incomplete version of the Epistle, and neither of the authors appears to be aware of the actual source or of its significance. Because it is of such enormous importance to the understanding of the movie, it is necessary to quote it here in full. I have used the King James translation, substituting the word "love" for the King James "charity", since in modern English usage "love" is closer to the original meaning. Try reading it two or three times, aloud if possible, to get it firmly in your head, before reading any further. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. For now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. "Le plus grand est AGAPE": the chorale is sung in French, except for the last word, which, as Julie helpfully points out to Olivier, has a different rhythm in Greek. Kieslowski and Preisner wanted to be sure we knew they weren't just talking about "amour". A crucial point which is often missed, even by those of us who have known and loved the passage since childhood, is that 1 Corinthians 13 is not just a bunch of warm fuzzies about the importance of love. Nor does it imply a comforting sense that God is part of the natural universe. Instead, it is a bedrock statement of Christian theology. Human beings, the Apostle is saying, cannot save themselves. Goodness won't get you into Heaven; neither will wisdom, self- sacrifice, or even holiness. What is necessary is grace: in St. Paul's sense, the absolute and unmerited love of God, and the willingness of the human soul to open itself to and return that love. Nobody says you have to agree with St. Paul, but this is what he says, here and elsewhere; and so does Kieslowski. Again and again throughout the "Trois Couleurs" trilogy, characters try to redeem themselves by their own efforts. "Vous etes bonne," says Sandrine to Julie, "C'est ce que vous voulez etre." (Apologies to French speakers: I assume that accent marks won't transmit via FTP, so you'll have to fill them in yourselves.) Good is what Julie WANTS to be. She is one of those who have the ability to "speak with the tongues of men and of angels" through her music; but she attempts to deal with her husband's death by cutting herself off from all emotions, including love. After the initial scene in the hospital, we never see her weep. Instead, she attempts to purge herself by compulsively swimming laps across the enormous, empty pool - a type of self-willed baptism, which comes to nothing. During Julie's visits to her mother, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, images of life are seen at one remove, "through a glass darkly", as human beings see it in the absence of God. More modern translations render this verse as "as if in a mirror". The reference still holds, since the mirror, or coffee spoon, or reflecting surface of a window, distorts one's perception of what is really there. The only piece of her former life which Julie keeps for herself is the blue lamp. Blue symbolizes music in the movie; I would argue that it also symbolizes pain - the overwhelming pain that washes over Julie when music forces her to feel. If you see Julie as having written, not merely improved or collaborated on, her husband's music, then she has tried to secure her husband's love by giving that music away, and thus giving herself away. It hasn't worked. She is unable to reconnect to her true self without reclaiming her own music, and in the process reopening herself both to pain and to love. (Anthony Storr, in "Music and the Mind", discusses at length the composers who have said that the act of composition was for them a direct connection to God.) When she returns to Olivier to begin that process, the first thing that she does is to remove from the concerto the "sounding brass" (trumpets) and "tinkling (in other translations, clanging) cymbals" (percussion). Red, on the other hand, is life, sexuality, and human love. In the sex-club scene with Lucille, we see behind Julie and Lucille - through a glass, darkly - the floor lights of the club, where the intense red of sexuality alternates with the intense blue of pain. Lucille - I do hope there are a few people out there who recognize THAT reference! Perhaps someone who speaks colloquial French better than I do can tell me whether it's significant that Lucille, from the first moment, addresses Julie with the intimate "tu", whereas everyone else in the movie, including Julie and Olivier, address each other with the formal "vous". At the end of the movie, human love is explicitly equated with the love of God. As Julie and Olivier make love, Antoine suddenly awakens out of sleep, clutching the necklace with the crucifix, overcome by something he does not understand. The camera pans past him to the movie posters on the walls of his room, which show huge closeups of men and women embracing. It continues on through her mother's face, Lucille's face, and finally the ultrasound picture of Sandrine's baby. In the final frame, blue and red are finally united and harmonized in the play of light on Julie's face. The play of light on faces and on everyday objects is one of the themes which unite the three movies. In my view, the light represents grace. When Julie is recalled from her isolation by the music of the street performer, so similar to her own, the reality of the world before her suddenly becomes almost unbearably vivid, as the camera focuses for long seconds on the movement of light across the edge of her coffee cup. That unbearable vividness seems to me to capture the essence of the experience of grace. WHITE If "Blue" is from start to finish a meditation on 1 Corinthians 13, then what are we to make of "White"? In its own quirky way, "White" is a cheerful and endearing movie. It does not lend itself to solemn interpretations. In this movie, the action shifts to Kieslowski's native Poland, a country which is currently being reborn, in a very secular sense. Karol Karol, similarly, manages to engineer a series of very secular rebirths. All of these rebirths are associated with the color white: when Karol is let out of the suitcase, when he doesn't kill Mikolaj, when he fakes his own death and then shows up in Dominique's bed. White thus appears as a symbol of hope and innocence, mirrored by the irrepressible hope and innocence in Karol's face. Speaking of hope and innocence, Karol's business success doesn't seem to have much to do with his business skill. When a shipment of bananas arrives at his warehouse, he tells his employees to put them in cold storage until the price goes up! This hopeful interpretation of the color white is constantly being undercut with irony. The white snow into which Karol is thrown upon being released from the suitcase appears to cover the municipal dump. The white of innocence can also be seen as the white of sterility and death. Another recurrent motif in "White" is the flocks of pigeons. Pigeons are everywhere; one even shows up on Karol's lap in the Metro, a place where one does not ordinarily encounter pigeons. When Dominique realizes that he is gone, she hears outside the window the rustle of departing pigeon wings. Taxonomically, pigeon = dove, as my seventh-grade science teacher never tired of reminding us; and doves in the New Testament represent the Spirit of God. But in this movie it appears as a somewhat whimsical spirit. When Karol looks up at a pigeon in flight, during the opening sequence, what immediately descends on his shoulder is something quite different from grace. One of the puzzling things about "White", the first time one sees it, is how little Karol grows as a result of all these rebirths. He gets rich and he gets revenge, but spiritually, as a human being, he gets nowhere. Only in the very last frame, once again, is there an indication of some kind of breakthrough. One is left unsure whether his tears show his joy at having finally captured Dominique's heart, or his realization of the futility of the whole endeavor. Or, quite possibly, both. So does my reading of "Blue" offer anything that is helpful to an understanding of "White?" I think it does. I suggest that in "White", Kieslowski is once again exploring the futility of a human being's attempt to save himself in the absence of God. The first time, the theme was grand; the second time, it's comic. RED If "Blue" and "White" are meant to explore the relationship of human beings to God, or the absence of God, then "Red" gives us God face to face. But lest anyone thinks Kieslowski's Christianity was of the orthodox and boring variety, he gives us a God very much of the late 20th century: old, tired, cynical; omniscient but not omnipotent; and perhaps in need of a little grace himself. He has given up his Old Testament role of Judge, and operates in the world only through the almost accidental agency of unmerited grace. "Kern" in German is seed, core, essence, or nucleus; Josef Kern's name recalls Christ's parable of the sower, in which "the seed is the Word of God." On one level Kern represents the artist, occupied with the artist's necessary task of eavesdropping on his neighbors, and with recreating and rectifying his own life through the action of the imagination. But the character's resonance is greater than this. He knows what will happen to the people on whom he spies. He also knows that the ferry will sink; you can see it in his face as he gives Valentine back her ticket, but he does nothing to stop her from going. "Who are you?", asks Valentine, implying that there is more to him than the human being whose story she partly knows. When he tells Valentine the story of his erroneous acquittal of the sailor, who was actually guilty, she responds, "Vous l'avez sauve." That in fact is what he has done: saved him through unmerited grace, not because of the sailor's own deserts. It is his possibly vengeful conviction of his former girlfriend's lover - who actually deserved it - which distresses him to the point where he has to give up his judgeship. The conjunction of artist and God is not unknown elsewhere in literature: Salman Rushdie, for instance, makes a personal appearance as God at one point in "The Satanic Verses". The review of the trilogy by David Kehr, in the November-December 94 issue of Film Comment, gives the same double interpretation of the Judge as I do here; but Kehr sees him only as the God of the Old Testament, not the New. (Is yet another buried pattern beginning to emerge here? Crucifixes - doves - God the Father? Can the three persons of the Trinity be plausibly associated with the ideas of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity? You be the judge. Anthony Storr says the human mind was made to invent schemas.) Names in "Red" seem to have a significance which does not appear in the other two movies. "Valentine" everyone has already caught; but why "Auguste"? Here's one possibility. Valentine and Augustine are two of the Christian saints most closely associated with the idea of love: St. Valentine as the patron saint of human love, St. Augustine as the great theologian of the love of God. St. Augustine's "Confessions" present him as a redeemed - not rescued, not reformed, but redeemed - sinner, who is only saved by accepting that love. Which brings us to another "aha!" moment: the significance of pears. More precisely, the pear brandy, eau-de-vie de poire, that Josef Kern offers twice to Valentine, and presents to her as a parting gift as she is about to board the ferry. "Eau de vie" - literally, "water of life" - has no more religious significance to an ordinary French speaker than the etymologically similar "whiskey" does to a speaker of English. But pears? One of the most famous personal anecdotes in religious literature occurs at the beginning of the "Confessions", when Augustine recalls his guilt over his childhood theft of pears from a neighbor's garden. Pears stolen are a symbol of the unredeemed sinner. Pears freely given, then, are a symbol of redemption. Peter Jacobs gently implies that I'm stretching for an interpretation here. He asks what passage from the Bible I would use to explain a reference to pomegranates. Quite simple: a reference to pomegranates would have dynamited the thematic structure of the entire trilogy. Kern would then appear as Dis, the god of the underworld, who tricks Persephone into staying with him six months out of the year by getting her to eat six pomegranate seeds. Her six- month stay in the underworld is offered by the Greek myth as an explanation of the endless cycle of the seasons. It allows no possibility of redemption. Apples, similarly, would have cast Kern as Satan, tempting Valentine to sin. Peaches, plums, cherries, etc., would have been meaningless, and thus there would have been no reason to insist on the image. But Kieslowski obviously does insist. Pain, again, is one of the recurrent motifs in this movie. Valentine seems to be in constant physical pain. We see her stumble; we see her massaging her hands; we see her pushing herself to the point of agony at the barre. Until someone can come up with a better explanation for this pain, I would argue that it represents the pain of the human condition itself: what theologians call original sin. Valentine, the most loving and generous of Kieslowski's protagonists, is certainly not sinful in any conventional sense. Her pain comes from her pushing herself towards a transcendence which she is unable to achieve on her own. Nor can she save her heroin-addicted brother. At the end of the movie, she tells Kern that she will be sending him something through her brother, and her responds, "Yes, I'd like to meet him." The ending of "Red" has been described as "mysterious" and "miraculous". In the most literal sense, it is both, because it represents the central mystery and miracle of Christianity. The main characters from all three movies, even the less than admirable Karol and Dominique, are saved by grace out of the wreck of the world - reborn "of water and the Spirit." (Once again, you don't have to believe in it, but you need to know that Kieslowski did.) No one weeps at the end of "Red". Instead, we see a repeat of the picture which was Valentine's favorite image of herself in the chewing-gum ads: a picture against the background of the red of life, in which the expression on her face is not one of sadness but of absolute terror. Until someone can give me a better explanation, I would argue that that terror represents the fear and trembling of the human soul in the absolute presence of God. LIBERTY, EQUALITY, ETC. You can easily challenge the interpretation of the trilogy given here on the grounds that Kieslowski himself said nothing about it. (Apart, of course, from the credit given to St. Paul at the end of "Blue".) In the interview from Web posted on the Cine Kieslowski website, he discusses the trilogy entirely in terms of the French ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In that interview, he describes his concern as being with the realization of those themes in his characters' interior and exterior lives. It is not difficult, however, to see the consummate ironist, who wraps his themes in layers of unanswered questions, as having another, intensely personal, theme. The liberty which Julie seeks, a liberation from the "traps" of possessions, relationships and human feelings, is not presented as a positive state in "Blue". The reconciliation in the ending can only occur when she realizes the limitations of that quest. Similarly, in "White", the only equality achieved by Karol at the end of the film is an equality of power, which translates to an equality of captivity. The theme of "fraternity" is muted in "Red", but it is clear that Valentine's efforts to save her brother have been unsuccessful. All of this makes perfect sense in the light of the additional interpretation offered above. Neither true liberty, true equality, nor true fraternity can be achieved in the absence of grace. What the opening sequences of all three movies have in common is the image of a journey which does not reach its intended destination. Note: My brother-in-law, who lives in Italy, translates Eco, and is more of an intellectual than I am, says that this is all perfectly obvious to Europeans. It is only on this side of the Atlantic, apparently, that we have entirely lost contact with our cultural roots.