How Death Will Judge Us
Video Watchdog #30, 1995
By Tim Lucas
http://cinemaweb.com/videowd/
VIDEOWD@aol.com

(c) 1995 by Tim Lucas

Thrust into the American spotlight with the Miramax release of his acclaimed Trois Coleurs 
("Three Colors") trilogy - BLUE [Bleu, 1992], WHITE [Blanc, 1993] and RED [Rouge, 1994] - 
Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski gained popular Western recognition at precisely the 
moment he chose to announce his retirement from the director's chair. At a press conference 
following the premiere of RED at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, a rumpled, graying Kieslowski 
announced his leave; at 53, he said, he finally had earned enough money to keep himself in 
cigarettes and planned to spend the foreseeable future sitting on a little bench in front of his 
house, contentedly smoking.

In an age when so many artists seem to be rebelling against the high pressures of the marketplace 
by retiring early - whether by hanging up their hat or blowing out their brains - Kieslowski's 
declaration has the ring of self-preservation, but it is not writ in stone. The humble future he has 
painted for himself sounds very much like an opening situation from one of his films.  Anyone 
who has seen his movies can easily imagine that, sooner or later, Krzysztof will observe 
something from his bench that may lure him back to scriptwriting and, possibly, directing.

Moreso than the work of any other contemporary director, Kieslowski's films are indicative of 
what the fantastic cinema should be, twenty years after the still-progressive likes of Nicolas 
Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW. Though grounded in the political realities of his native Poland, or 
more recently in those of a reunified Europe, his films are concerned first and foremost with the 
vagaries of existence - coincidence, intuition, symbiosis - and the mysterious, invisible laws that 
govern the relationships of the living and the dead.

With Miramax Home Entertainment's recent release of RED, the Three Colors trilogy is now 
complete on video, and there is no better way to plunge oneself in Kieslowski's universe. Like 
any profoundly satisfying new experience, these three films compel the viewer's appetite onward.  
While there may be no future Kieslowski films to anticipate, our curiosity can be readily 
indulged by the rich vein of his previous work that exists on home video.

To reach back to NO END (1984), with its portrait of a young widow burdened by the legacy of 
a gifted husband, is to enrich one's appreciation of BLUE; Jerzy Stuhr's lead performance in 
CAMERA BUFF (1979) sweetens his supporting performance in WHITE, with which the earlier 
film shares the peripheral element of a failed marriage; and Irene Jacob's haunting performance 
in THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VTRONIQUE (1991) as a woman inexplicably saddened by the 
death of a doppleganger she has never met, lends an extra resonance to her equally indelible 
performance in RED, as a woman frightened by the feeling that "something important is 
happening," while also accentuating the subtle duality of the latter film's plotline.  It is a 
remarkably balanced body of work, each film reflecting upon another, much as Kieslowski's 
decision to put his camera down is complemented by the decision of the hero of CAMERA 
BUFF (the first of his films to be widely exported) to pick one up.

CAMERA BUFF

1979, New Yorker Video #34594, HF, $79.95, 107m 9s

The earliest of Kieslowski's films to be released here on video, CAMERA BUFF (his 12th 
production) is an engrossing black comedy about Filip Mosz (Jerzy Stuhr), a simple man whose 
life as a contented husband, new father and factory worker is turned upside down by the gift of 
an 8mm camera.  At first, he intends only to make home movies of his newborn daughter, but 
when his boss (Stefan Czyzewski) requests that he use the camera to record the company's 25th 
anniversary celebration - an offer he literally can't refuse - the resulting documentary vans a 
prestigious award and the amateur finds himself hailed as an artist with the ability to inform and 
enrich people's lives... while his own life goes promptly down the toilet.

Kieslowski's scenario is never less than reasonable (Filip's success begins with Third Prize at a 
Festival where the films are judged so poor that no Grand Prize is awarded), and the choices he 
forces on his unassertive hero are the kind that would frazzle more resourceful men. (For 
example: should he surrender the chance to represent his community with his craft, and possibly 
help to improve its living conditions, in order to salvage his once-blissful marriage to a woman 
who demands that he choose between her and his camera?) In addition to portraying a rainbow of 
wildly divergent social attitudes to film, Kieslowski also explores the corruptive urge to falsify 
the factual nature of the medium, at first on a personal level (Filip forgets to film his baby's 
homecoming and pleads with his wife to restage the event) and then following it to the extreme 
of bureaucratic censorship (Filip's imposing boss, who funds his documentaries, demands cuts 
that would curtail the self-expression of his work, and enforce its political correctness). Though 
made as a bittersweet critique of the restrictions imposed on East European filmmakers of the 
time, CAMERA BUFF can be viewed as a more universal satire about art and conformity, the 
temptations of success, and the all-consuming allure of cinema.  Polish directors Krzysztof 
Zanussi (THE CATAMOUNT KILLING) and Andrzej Jurga make special guest appearances as 
themselves.

The onscreen title is Amator ("Amateur"), which more effectively accentuates Filip's 
overlapping, and ultimately warring, responsibilities as filmmaker and lover. The Polish dialogue 
is subtitled in English, printed in easy-to-read yellow, with the character names Anglicized (Filip 
is “Philip,” his wife Irka is "Irena"); the correct spellings sometimes show up in the context of 
the film itself. The full-screen color image, transferred from a 35mm positive source, is generally 
in excellent condition. It has been cropped from its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio without 
significant loss.

NO END

1984, New Yorker Video #52794, HF/LB, $79.95, 102m 22s

CAMERA BUFF was followed by two other features not as yet released on video in English-
speaking countries: BLIND CHANCE [Przypadek] and the made-for-television SHORT 
WORKING DAY [Krotki Dzien Pracy], both produced in 1981. Of the two, BLIND CHANCE 
was pointedly fantastic in approach, showing how a single, banal event in a Polish man's 
(Boguslaw Linda) life - arriving late at a station and running to catch a train - could have played 
out in three markedly different ways.  It deserves to be more widely seen - on video.

An agonized performance by Graznya Szapolowska resides at the heart of NO END, 
Kieslowski's fourth film, a piercing snapshot of Poland stifling under martial law in the 1980s.  
Szapolowska plays Ulla Zyro, a recently widowed translator of Orwell whose late husband Antek 
(Jerzy Radziwilowicz, who haunts the periphery of the film, which he also narrates) was one of 
his country's most progressive and promising attorneys. At the time of his death, Antek was 
preparing to defend a strike organizer (whose affiliation goes unnamed, though a Solidarity 
poster is half-glimpsed on the wall of his wife's apartment); the unfinished task is inherited by 
Labrador (Aleksander Bardini), an elderly lawyer of the old school - and Antek's former teacher - 
who accepts the case as his “swansong” when he learns that he will soon be forcibly retired. As 
Labrador's client is caught between the conflicting advice of his aging counselor and his younger 
associate, who respectively advise him to give up and persist in his hunger strike, Ulla struggles 
to cope with the void left by Antek on a more personal level, and with the hopelessness she feels 
in regard to representing her husband's memory in a country still sorely in need of his talent and 
vision

This superbly acted film (Polish title: Bez Konca) was the first collaboration between Kieslowski 
and screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz (a former lawyer not unlike Antek in his political 
leanings), who would co-author all of the director's subsequent works. The writing and direction 
are acutely sensitive, framing its characters in a twilight zone between negation and progress, in 
which the barrier between life and death (and near-death) has become tenuous at best, and the 
temptation of relief from daily stress can be all too persuasive. There are some unsettling 
moments in which communications seem to pass between these two worlds; Antek's ghost is 
shown petting a black dog before the character of "Labrador" is introduced, and Ulla has 
numerous encounters with evidence that his spirit has not yet abandoned her fleshly orbit.  
Szapolowska is extraordinary in a candid (and sexually frank) performance that addresses the 
shock of awakening from contentment, and fault can be found with none of the supporting 
performances; Kieslowski, Piesiewicz and their actors commit to film some of the most 
believable and sympathetic characters found in contemporary cinema. The emotions of the piece 
are equally well delineated by a rich yet understated score by Zbigniew Preisner, whose haunting 
music would grace Kieslowski's subsequent work through RED.

New Yorker Video's cassette is culled from a 35mm positive print in excellent condition, and it is 
presented in its original 1.66 theatrical ratio. The monaural sound is quite acceptable, and the 
Polish dialogue is translated on the frame with “enhanced yellow subtitles.”

DEKALOG
(THE TEN COMMANDMENTS)

1988, Artificial Eye #ART-024A (Episodes 1-5), #ART-024B (Episodes 6-10) [UK/PAL], HF, 
£22.49 each, 289m 58s (Volume 1), 281m 39s (Volume 2)

In 1988, Kieslowski and Piesiewicz concocted DEKALOG, an ambitious Polish Television 
miniseries that collected 10 hour-long stories inspired by the Ten Commandments - all set in the 
same high-rise apartment block in Warsaw. Their intention with the series was not to 
contemporize the Old Testament edicts in a religious light, but rather to apply them as ancient 
codes of conduct to contemporary situations in which their place may or may not be readily 
apparent.

What follows is a brief synopsis of each episode, to offer a hint of their approach.

1. “I am the Lord, thy God. Thou shalt have no other God but me.” Krzysztof (Henryk 
Baranowski), a University teacher, lives with his young son Pawel (Wojchiech Klata), who 
becomes inquisitive about death and the soul after seeing a dog frozen to death by the winter 
cold. Given the absence of his mother (who may be dead or simply away), and the attitudes of an 
agnostic father who places his absolute faith in science, Pawel's queries are deferred to his 
Catholic aunt (Maja Komorowska). When the pond outside their highrise freezes, Pawel admits 
that he has discovered a Christmas gift hidden in a closet - a pair of skates - and asks if he might 
have them early to skate on the pond. Krzysztof uses his computer to calculate the density of the 
ice, and tests the ice with his own weight before giving his permission... and learns a bitter lesson 
about the laws of probability. (52m 59s)

2. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” An aging doctor (NO END's 
Aleksandr Bardini) in the apartment complex is approached by Dorota (Krystyna Janda), a 
neighboring woman whose car ran over his dog two years earlier. She seeks information about 
her husband, mortally ill in hospital, with whom she has been unable to have children; she is 
secretly in the third month of pregnancy by another man, which she will terminate should her 
husband's condition improve. The doctor is hesitant to predict one way or the other, but is 
harassed until he swears that recovery is impossible. And then a miracle happens... (56m 25s)

3. “Honor the Sabbath Day.” On Christmas Eve, taxi driver Janusz (Daniel Olbrychski) is coaxed 
away from his wife and family by Ewa (Maria Pakulnis), a former mistress who beseeches him 
to help locate her missing husband. After an eventful evening, Janusz learns that Ewa has used 
him as part of a superstitious scheme to change her luck around. (55m 15s)

4. “Honor thy Father and thy Mother.” Anka (Adriana Biedrzynska), a 20 year-old theater 
student, has a spontaneous, uninhibited relationship with her widowed father (Janusz Gajos).  
While he is away on a trip, she discovers an envelope marked "To be opened in the event of my 
death" hidden in a drawer; it contains a sealed letter to Anka written by her dead mother. Upon 
her father's return, Anka tells him that she has read the letter and learned that he is not her 
biological father. That night, they reassess their feelings for one another and discuss the viability 
of an incestuous relationship... (55m)

5. “Thou shalt not kill.” Jacek (Miroslaw Baka), a sulky and malicious teenager, stalks the streets 
of Warsaw in search of trouble and murders a taxi driver (Jan Tesasz). That same afternoon, Piotr 
(Krzysztof Globisz), a sensitive law student, decides to become a trial lawyer on the day of his 
final bar exams.  Their destinies converge when Piotr is placed in charge of Jacek's defense.  This 
shattering argument against capital punishment was one of two DEKALOG episodes later 
expanded into theatrical features; it is letterboxed here at 1.50:1. The expanded version, reviewed 
separately in this article, was titled ASHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING. (57m 6s)

6. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” A young postal worker, Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko), 
becomes infatuated with Magda (140 E14D's Grasznya Szapolowska), an attractive artist who 
lives in the opposite apartment block, after spying on her with a telescope. When she becomes 
aware of his interference in her life, Magda tries to demythisize herself - and love - in the virgin's 
eyes, and unintentionally drives him to attempt suicide. The sudden lack of communication 
compels Magda to spy on Tomek's bedroom window... This episode (also letterboxed at 1.50:1) 
was later expanded into the feature A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE, reviewed later in this 
article. (58m I Is)

7. “Thou shalt not steal.” Majka (Maja Barelkowska) abducts her six year-old daughter Ania 
(Katarzyna Piwowarczyk), who was raised as her sister to silence the scandal of her unwed, 
teenage pregnancy. She takes the child to the cottage of her surprised former lover Wojtek 
(BLIND CHANCE's Boguslaw Linda), a manufacturer of teddy bears, hoping to start over. 
When this doesn't work out, Majka phones her possessive mother (Anna Polony) and agrees to 
return with Ania on the condition that she publicly admits to being the child's grandmother - a 
condition which the woman finds unacceptable. (54m 40s)

8. “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” At the University of Warsaw, ethics professor Zofia 
(Maria Koscialkowska) is introduced to Elzbieta (Teresa Marczewska), a New York-based 
translator of her books who has come to audit her classes. It soon becomes apparent that the two 
women have a personal, as well as a professional, connection. During the War, Elzbieta was a 
Jewish child offered sanctuary by Zofia and her husband, on the condition that she be christened 
in the Catholic faith; though this condition was met, the couple reconsidered and withdrew their 
offer of protection. The child survived and now has returned for an explanation. (53m 55s)

9. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.” Roman (Piotr Machalica), a surgeon, is notified by 
his own doctor that, for unspecified reasons, he can never have sexual intercourse again. His wife 
Hanka (Ewa Blasczyk) is distraught and, with Roman's implicit blessing, initiates a secret affair 
with a younger man some time later. Hints of this extramarital union begin to intrude on Roman's 
consciousness, and he lurks around the empty apartment of Hanka's vacationing parents - only to 
have his suspicions confirmed. (57m 43s)

10. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.” In this uniquely comic episode, a reclusive 
stamp enthusiast dies, leaving his priceless collection to his two sons - Artur (Zbigniew 
Zamachowski), a singer with the punk band City Death, and the more conservative Jerzy 
(CAMERA BUFF's Jerzy Stuhr). At first, the two brothers vote to liquidate the collection but 
find it unsalable; it is renowned among other collectors, who cannot afford the whole collection - 
which is worth millions - and are unwilling to buy it piecemeal, as this would diminish the finest 
stamp collection in Poland. Thus informed, the brothers become paranoid about protecting their 
stamps - installing bars on the vacant apartment's windows and a vicious dog on the premises; in 
time, they also become obsessed with the collection, determined to complete it with the 
acquisition of the stamp that eluded their father throughout his life: the Austrian Rose Mercury.  
How badly do they want it? Enough to donate an expendable organ? "Am I supposed to give a 
kidney for a stamp?" Jerzy asks.  "Not just a stamp," his brother argues, " - an Austrian Rose 
Mercury!" (56m 55s)

In his Introduction to Faber & Faber's monolithic book of the DEKALOG teleplays, Stanley 
Kubrick commends Kieslowski and Piesiewicz for their “very real ability to dramatize their ideas 
rather than just talking about them... They do this with such dazzling skill, you never see the 
ideas coming and don't realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart.” 
Indeed, whereas most other films yield their themes only after a complete viewing (or serial 
viewings), DEKALOG is designed to be approached with its themes known at the outset, handed 
down from the Commandments themselves. (Curiously, the Commandments are never spelled 
out in the titles - perhaps to force viewers to become that much more interactive with the 
programs.) It is the genius of the presentation to make the viewer “fish” for the assigned 
commandment in each elliptical narrative; the connection occurs most often “between the lines” 
of each story, focusing the viewer's attention on a spiritual plane. The relevance of each story to 
each commandment is sometimes not readily apparent, forcing a deeper, prolonged consideration 
of the issues at hand. Some episodes leave the viewer feeling resolved, clear-headed and warm, 
while others cling to us like a rhetorical question - like DEKALOG 7's “Is it possible to steal 
something that belongs to you?”

Kieslowski was determined to keep anything as earthly as politics out of this spiritual omnibus, 
but a great deal about the intolerable living conditions in Poland comes across between the lines: 
a decrepit hospital where patient inquiries are indulged only one day each week, the dial phones 
and their unreliable connections, a wretched economy in which a stamp collection worth millions 
can be neither bought or sold - only stolen by another collector with a quixotic idea of its true 
value. Even the high-rise apartment complex used as the main setting for each episode is relative.  
“It's the most beautiful housing estate in Warsaw,” Kieslowski once said.  “it looks pretty awful, 
so you can imagine what the others are like.”

By situating all of its stories in and around the same apartment block, DEKALOG gains an extra 
dimensions three - dimensionalism - that would not have been possible otherwise. Characters 
introduced in earlier episodes reappear later - the doctor from Episode 2 boards an elevator at an 
untimely moment in Episode 4, and the recovered husband and wife from that story turn up again 
in Episode 5; later episodes also complete our knowledge of characters met in the periphery of 
earlier stories, such as the man visiting Zofia's apartment in Episode 8 to show off his Postfahrt 
Graf Zeppelin stamps “as if they were pictures of his grandchildren,” whose burial opens Episode 
10.

Kieslowski reinforces the series’ spiritual fabric with the inexplicable, recurring presence of a 
nameless young man (unacknowledged in the credits), who heralds the pivotal moments within 
each conflict. In Episode 1, we see him crying beside the broken ice of the pond, as if already 
aware of what will happen there; in Episode 4, he walks through the woods with a canoe as Anka 
tears into the envelope marked “To be opened in the event of my death”; in Episode 5, he appears 
before the taxi driver - en route to his murder - and gestures ominously; in Episode 8, as Elsbieta 
reveals her true identity to Zofia during class, the camera pans deliberately away to identify him 
as one of the ethics students. This judgmental, deathlike wanderer appears in all but two of the 
episodes; according to Kieslowski, the character was filmed for Episode 7 but the scenes didn't 
work and were cut out, while Episode 10, being comic in nature, didn't require the intervention of 
such a weighty symbol.

As characters recur in DEKALOG, so do the emotions addressed by each new episode seem to 
relate in various oblique ways to the emotions explored in preceding scenarios. The question of 
terminating a pregnancy in Episode 2 is shaded by the devastation of the child's icy death in 
Episode 1; in Episode 3, Ewa's need to share Christmas Eve with Janusz, in place of her absent 
husband, makes us think of what the holiday might have been for Dorota, had her husband's 
health fared less miraculously in Episode 2, and so on.

While they may seem minor episodes in the grand scheme of DEKALOG itself, Episodes 9 and 
10 are particularly interesting in light of works to come: specifically, Kieslowski's Three Colors 
trilogy. In the stamp collection nightmare, Zbigniew Zamachowski and Jerzy Stuhr play brothers 
- as they also do in WHITE, another comic rumination on materialism, currency and Polish 
despair. The earlier episode, on the other hand, contains embryonic forms of narrative that would 
later ripen into THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE (one of Roman's patients is a girl who 
wants to sing classical music - especially the arias of fictitious composer Van Den Budenmayer - 
but cannot due to a heart condition) and RED (Roman spying on his wife's lovemaking with 
another man). In fact, the ties between DEKALOG 9 and RED are so conspicuous that composer 
Zbigniew Preisner included two tracks of the “Van Den Budenmayer” aria from DEKALOG 9 
on his soundtrack album of RED.

With the exception of Episodes 3 and 9, which were both photographed by RED's immensely 
talented Piotr Sobocinski, the remaining eight teleplays were divided among eight different 
cinematographers. As a result, DEKALOG offers an impressively diverse catalogue of 
cinematographic styles. Perhaps the most effective of all is Episode 5, in which Slawomir ldziak 
uses a series of green iris filters to depict Jacek's tainted world-view, a landscape depleted of all 
hope and warmth, characterized by nausea, revulsion and emptiness. Idziak took a similarly 
inventive approach to the filming of Kieslowski's next theatrical feature, THE DOUBLE LIFE 
OF VERONIQUE.

DEKALOG has been shown twice to date on the BBC, but it remains largely unseen in America, 
though it's hard to imagine more ideal programming for a week-long PBS schedule. The only 
means of accessing this crucial work in (subtitled) English is the British PAL-format release 
from Artificial Eye Video, packaged in two handsome, annotated, book-thick volumes containing 
two cassettes (five episodes) each. The programs are recorded in Hi-Fi mono, and look fine, if a 
little on the soft side. The subtitles, printed at the bottom of the frame in white, are consistently 
readable and sometimes amusingly Anglocentric - as in Episode 7, when the train station cashier 
asks Majka if she's running away from a “bloke.”

A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING

1988, Luminous Film & Video Wurks, HF/LB, $28. 00 ppd., 80m 28s

A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE

1988, Luminous Film & Video Wurks, HF/LB, $28.00 ppd., 82m 37s

Part of the financing for DEKALOG came from an agreement that Kieslowski would prepare 
theatrical, feature-length versions of two of the episodes. Expanding the fifth episode to please 
himself and the sixth to please his investors, Kieslowski delivered two alternate cuts known 
respectively as A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING and A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE.  
These versions add approximately 30m to each teleplay, but they are unique assemblies and are 
regarded by their director as separate works.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING follows three individual characters to their dates with 
destiny: Piotr (Krzysztof Globisz), a sensitive law student who suddenly opts to become a trial 
lawyer on the day of his final bar exams; Jacek (Miroslaw Baka), a sulky teenager who hates the 
world as much as he worships a worn photograph of a young girl kept folded in his pocket; and a 
sleazy, middle-aged taxi driver (Jan Tesasz) who ogles teenage girls and is cruel to animals. As 
Piotr celebrates passing his exams in a local restaurant, Jacek finishes his coffee at an adjacent 
table, winds a rope around his hand, and hails a taxi-strangling the driver to death on a lonely 
wooded road. Then Kieslowski jumps ahead - not to Jacek's trial, at which he is defended by 
Piotr, but directly to his conviction and speedy execution by hanging (ie., strangulation at the 
hands of the state).

The three characters are superbly realized in script and performance - one excited by a future rich 
in promise, one experimenting with violence to rationalize the pain and guilt he feels, and 
another who numbs his sense of loneliness by indulging a sadistic streak - and anticipate the 
grand summation of BLUE: that without love, we are nothing. The two death scenes are 
masterfully rendered and appropriately agonizing, worthy of FRENZY-era Hitchcock, and the 
deliberately jaundiced, dark-around-the-edges cinematography gives the Warsaw scenery an acid 
pang of golden desolation.  Magnificent, with an aftertaste that's hard to shake.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE may approach the word “adultery” with Old Testament 
strictness - as any form of sexual activity unsanctioned by marriage - but it takes a somewhat 
perverse approach to its “love story.” Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko), a young and naive postal clerk, 
lives with his mother in a highrise apartment, where his bedroom windows allow him to spy on 
the life and loves of Magda (NO END's Grasznya Szapolowska), an older woman for whom he 
fosters an infatuation. The lovestruck Tomek gains closeness by working as Magda's milkman on 
Sunday mornings, and by manipulating her mail, but his strategy backfires. After an initial angry 
reaction, Magda develops an inquisitive interest in her would-be Romeo, unaware of the 
dangerous impact her frank, cynical approach to sexual matters will have on his cloistered, 
sensitive nature.

The film's situational similarity to Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW is less interesting than the 
voyeuristic parallels that later surface in the “Three Colors” trilogy-particularly WHITE and 
RED, in which the visual evidence of sexual betrayal propels two different men into new 
relationships that literally save their lives. A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE may seem less 
potent than its companion feature - as WHITE is often accused of being “weaker” than BLUE 
and RED - but neither film could not be of commensurate impact and still be true to its mission.  
Lubaszenko and Szapolowska embody their characters on a level that transcends what we've 
come to know as “television acting.” A modest story, perhaps, but potent dramatic alchemy 
nonetheless.

These two features (which differ from the DEKALOG versions) are available in Great Britain 
from Tartan Video (79 Wardour St., London WIV 3TH). Both films are spoken in Polish, with 
English subtitles printed on the frame in white, and letterboxed at 1.66: 1. In the States, the only 
present source for these films is Luminous Film & Video Wurks, whose tapes are converted 
directly from the PAL pre-records, and clamshell-packaged in color reproductions of the original 
box art. The running times are those of the PAL originals

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE

1991, Paramount #LD15122 (LD), D/S/SS/CC, $34.98, 97m 28s

Poised between the major works of DEKALOG and the Three Colors trilogy, THE DOUBLE 
LIFE OF VERONIQUE feels no less monumental. Though compact in length, it is one of 
Kieslowski's most challenging works, containing a far richer tapestry of themes and ideas that 
can be gleaned at face value. It provides a perfect introduction to the trilogy, with which it shares 
images and concerns; surprisingly, it also provides a crucial postscript to the trilogy, particularly 
RED, for reasons that will be discussed later.

In 1966, two identical girls are born to two different families in France and Poland, and they 
grow into strikingly similar young women. Both are tenderly aware of “not being alone in the 
world.” The Polish girl, Weronika (Irene Jacob), studies piano but is discovered to have a unique 
and powerful singing voice, which wins a local competition. One day, while stumbling into a 
demonstration in the heart of Krakow, Weronika is stunned by the sight of her own identical 
twin, taking snapshots of the scene from a tourist bus. The incident seems to loosen her hold on 
life; she begins to suffer from heart episodes and eventually, in a shocking scene, succumbs to a 
heart attack during her first public performance. At the exact moment of her death, the French 
girl-Veronique (also Jacob) - feels her pleasure during sexual intercourse interrupted by an 
inexplicable sense of grief. Feeling that someone or something important has disappeared from 
her life, she instinctively retires from her own singing career to become a music teacher. Her 
senses keenly attuned to the invisible manipulations behind the curtain of everyday reality, she 
feels the presence of an unseen visitor, witnesses spectral phenomena, and finds herself attracted 
to a puppeteer named Alexandre (Philippe Volter), whose face she accidentally spies during a 
puppet show that might well have been inspired by Weronika's life and death. Shortly thereafter, 
Veronique begins to receive odd tributes in the mail - a shoelace, an empty cigar box, a tape of 
weird sounds - unusual clues beckoning her toward a date with destiny.

Scripted once again by Kieslowski and Piesiewicz, THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE is a 
haunting film about instinct, intuition and the inexplicable. It can be taken literally, as the story 
of two soul mates (the dead one steering the living one to a life of happiness), but it can also be 
interpreted as a metaphor for the imaginary playmates of one's childhood, the brothers and sisters 
of only children, who must perish before they can enter adulthood and experience genuine, 
mutual love. While the second interpretation has its uses, the former (though more fantastic) is 
better supported by Kieslowski's insistently phantasmal mise en scene.  As such, it belongs in the 
company of such novels as Aldous Huxley's TIME MUST HAVE A STOP and Vladimir 
Nabokov's TRANSPARENT THINGS - not to mention Kieslowski's own NO END - in which 
characters continue to be active participants on the chessboard of life well after their deaths. This 
interpretation is thoroughly supported by Kieslowski's expert manipulations of music and color.

In her first starring role, Swiss actress Irene Jacob (then 24, having been discovered in a small 
role in Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants) summons a wealth of sparkle and soul in her two 
performances. Reminiscent of a young Ingrid Bergman, but showing a maturity of approach that 
Bergman herself did not evince until later in her own career, Jacob was named Best Actress at 
the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.

Paramount's disc has been criticized elsewhere for looking muddy and drained of color, but in 
fact, the transfer closely approximates the artistic intentions of Kieslowski's most innovative 
cinematographer, Slamowir Idziak (who later filmed BLUE). The film was photographed using a 
golden yellow filter, and the resulting sepia-cum-russet color scheme was apparently further 
augmented with the deliberate elimination of the color blue from the film's spectrum. True blue 
appears only a few times in the picture, in each instance reflecting a subjective feeling of love or 
otherness: Weronika's sighting of Veronique (where she appears almost haloed by the color); the 
blue dress of Weronika's “beautiful” aunt; Veronique's discovery of the puppeteer's reflection in 
a backstage mirror; Alexandre's van; and another subjective view of the puppeteer, as Veronique 
watches him covertly through a stained glass window. The technique lends the color a magical 
quality that recalls Spielberg's isolated use of red in SCHINDLER'S LIST; the otherwise total 
omission of the color supports the feeling, expressed by Veronique, that something important has 
disappeared from her life. (It is also tempting to imagine that Kieslowski subtracted the color 
from VERONIQUE in order to revel in it with his next film, BLUE.)

There are indeed moments when color seems to drain out of the movie almost completely, but it 
could be argued that the russet-tinted scenes (such as Veronique's meeting with Alexandre in the 
train station bar) are those in which Weronika's ghost is most present. Veronica is literally a 
shade of red, and shortly after Veronique receives the anonymous phone call that initiates her 
romantic and elliptic adventure, a distorted impressionistic replay of Weronika's death onstage 
washes across the screen, succeeded by the same russet shade of red, which is held there for 
several moments. Another scene sharing this tint is the phantasmagorical episode of Veronique 
being awakened by a shimmering light in her room. She goes to the window to investigate and 
sees a neighbor angling a mirror outside an adjacent window, who soon goes back inside.  
Smiling, Veronique turns... and sees the light still flitting across her walls and floor, no longer 
projected from any explicable source. She reaches out to touch the light and it zips offscreen.  
Veronique turns toward the camera, reacts as if she can almost see someone - and as we feel the 
moment in danger of becoming too literal, Kieslowski cuts to the next scene.

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE is the first of Kieslowski's films to involve music on the 
level of an important textual (as opposed to textural) layer, and Zbigniew Preisner's score can 
hardly be overstated as a component of its spiritual makeup and overall impact. The music being 
performed by Weronika at the moment of her death is described (by Veronique, who later 
teaches it to her young music students) as the recently discovered work of a forgotten 18th 
Century Dutch composer. (This same piece is sung in DEKALOG 9 by another young singer 
with a heart condition, who identifies it as the work of Van Den Budenmayer, a fictitious maestro 
who also haunts the periphery of the Three Colors trilogy.) Weronika's aria is later used to 
suggest her spectral involvement behind the scenes of Veronique's life. In the film's last scene, 
she drives to her father's house and pauses outside to touch a tree; indoors, her father is building 
furniture, and as the aria builds on the soundtrack, he becomes slowly aware of her nearness - as 
if the music has transmitted an intuition of her arrival from the wood of the tree to the wood 
beneath his saw.1

The film was shot in an aspect ratio of either 1. 75 or 1.66: 1, but was shown in most American 
theaters on screens pre-matted to 1.85:1; therefore, while the disc is not letterboxed, the image 
appears to be more whole than those of Miramax's Three Colors laserdiscs, which were filmed at 
the same gauge and overmatted to 1.85 or 1.90:1. Though recorded in stereo surround, the rear 
channel activity is minor and exclusively concerned with music and ambient sound effects. The 
Polish and French dialogue is strictly center channel, with white English subtitles. The disc also 
features a limited use of closed captioning, not for dialogue (the film is already subtitled), but to 
distinguish speech from song and to draw attention to music and other sounds. Regrettably, the 
disc is not chapter indexed.

BLUE

1992, Touchstone #2759SAS (LD),
D/S/SS/LB, NSR (VHS), $39.99 (LD), 97m 44s

Like his DEKALOG, Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy is built on a captivatingly ambitious 
foundation. The three colors to which the film titles allude are those of the French flag, and each 
film respectively addresses the themes embodied by France's national motto: “Liberte!  Egalite!  
Fraternite!” (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.) On a more obvious level, each film also makes 
emphatic use of its eponymous color in its art direction and in the prevailing emotions of its 
story. (BLUE is about death and melancholy, WHITE is about weddings and starting over with a 
clean slate, and RED deals with embarrassment, warning signs, and in a literal and apolitical 
sense, communism - that is, fraternity, or the sense of community.) The stories told by the three 
films unfold more or less simultaneously, and they are ultimately tied not only together but also 
to Kieslowski's previous films - for example, BLUE and RED's oblique references to the 
fictitious composer Van Den Budenmayer.

BLUE chronicles the survival of Julie Vignon (Juliette Binoche) after a car accident takes the 
lives of her young daughter Anna and husband Patrice, a noted classical composer then at work 
on a “Song for the Unification of Europe” - a magnum opus scheduled to be played 
simultaneously by orchestras in different continental cities during a major televised event.  
Unable to express her grief, Julie is also left without a way of expressing her musical talent, 
which she cannot do without confessing that the compositions attributed to her husband were 
actually written (or co-written) by her - and thereby damaging his memory as a national hero.  
She responds by scrapping the charts for the unfinished opus, selling the family mansion and 
moves anonymously to a squalid area of town where, despite her best efforts, she finds herself 
drawn into the downbeat, dangerous lives of her neighbors. She is traced to her new apartment by 
her late husband's associate Olivier (Benoit Regent) - a former lover who locates her by 
following an elliptic trail, much as Veronique finds Alexandre in THE DOUBLE LIFE OF 
VERONIQUE - but she repels him. When Julie learns that Olivier has been hired to complete the 
Unification Song, she tries to discourage him, but cannot challenge his creative decisions without 
exposing her own authority in the matter.

Although BLUE is one of the rare films to successfully communicate the joyful process of 
musical composition, it is not a hymn to creativity; rather, it uses the stirrings of Julie's 
unanswered creative impulse (shockingly, beautifully expressed through a sudden surge of 
orchestral power in her consciousness) to show her need for collaboration - or to use a more 
provocative word, intercourse - with others. To sharpen our attunement to Julie's inner life, 
Kieslowski allows us to occupy her senses as she indulges in a series of intimate, strangely 
affecting point-of-view shots - watching the shadows cast by a coffee cup on a tablecloth as day 
passes into evening, or her own curved reflection on a spoon as it rocks back and forth inside a 
bottleneck. Kieslowski's oeuvre is full of such moments, not quite epiphanic yet peculiarly 
familiar and hypnotic, but they have never been as meaningful as they are here. BLUE 
commences with one or two such reveries - starting with a blue foiled candy wrapper, held 
outside a car window, fluttering as it fights against the wind - viewed from the perspective of 
Julie's daughter Anna, on the last day of her life. In this context, Julie's own abstract reveries 
establish a common mind between her and Anna - subtly reminiscent of the psychic bond 
between Weronika and Veronique - just as her completion of her late husband's work allows their 
relationship to continue. If the theme of this film is unity, it is not only that of a consolidated 
Europe, but also the interior unity of a family divided by death.

Binoche is spellbinding in what is virtually a one-woman show; her performance is thoroughly 
convincing as it shifts from a self-protective, business-like demeanor, to pensive distraction, to 
nakedly vulnerable fear. The film is populated with several minor supporting roles, all well-
played, whose importance seems to reside wholly in the suspense of how Binoche's character 
will react to them and the demands they make upon her. Emmanulle Riva (Hiroshima mon 
amour) is particularly memorable in the small but important role of Julie's Alzheimer's-afflicted 
mother, the only contact she maintains during her exile from life, a cruel allowance as the disease 
ensures her continued privacy.

The magnificent concluding montage, in which the wandering camera revisits each of the film's 
characters in solitary glimpses, was accompanied in theatrical prints with partial (and misplaced) 
English subtitles for the aria to "Song for the Unification of Europe" (sung by Beata Rybotycka), 
culled from a Latin translation of a Biblical passage. The effect of this sequence, in its original 
form, was devastating; unfortunately, the finale as presented in Touchstone's tape and disc 
editions is without subtitles. The missing English translation of the original French lyrics, itself 
translated from an Old Testament passage in Latin, can be found in the booklet accompanying 
Virgin's compact disc of Zbigniew Preisner's glorious soundtrack [#724383902729, 40m 47s].2 
Here it is, with the lines included in Miramax 35mm prints presented in italics:

Though I speak with the tongues of angels,
If I have not love...
My words would resound with
but 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, If I have not love...
I am nothing.

Love is patience, full of goodness; Love tolerates all things,
Aspires to all things.
Love never dies,
while the prophecies shall be done away,
tongues shall be silenced, knowledge shall fade...
thus then shall linger only
faith, hope and love...
but the greatest of these...
is love.

Without these words to guide us, the concluding images of BLUE are easily misinterpreted, 
seeming more bitter than bittersweet. The final image of Julie - weeping behind a rain-freckled 
window - should express that, having survived a period of great difficulty, she is on the road to 
admitting her emotions once again; instead, Touchstone's tape and disc encourage her 
misinterpretation as one of many souls isolated by a continuing inability to express or receive 
affection. While the film deserves to be reissued with this misleading flaw corrected, its current 
state should deter no one from seeing it. BLUE is a profoundly moving film, and one of 
Kieslowski's most stirring and memorable achievements.

In some ways the simplest component of the trilogy, BLUE also rewards second viewings in 
ways that could not have been anticipated when it was first released. In a minor subplot of the 
film, Julie discovers that her husband had a mistress, Sandrine (Florence Pernel), a local attorney, 
whom she tracks to the courthouse. As she loiters in the hall for a glimpse of this woman, 
Kieslowski slyly inserts a preview of his next film: Julie pokes her head into one of the 
courtrooms, and there - for a moment or two - are Julie Delpy and Zbigniew Zamachowski's 
characters from WHITE, speaking dialogue that will be heard again in that film. Juliette Binoche 
reciprocates with a cameo appearance in WHITE, her famous face fleetingly visible in the back 
of the courtroom as Delpy vindictively pursues the embarrassment of her husband and the 
annulment of their marriage.3

The Touchstone cassette and laserdisc editions differ in the usual obvious ways, but the 
penetrating quality of the color blue itself looks and feels substantially enriched on disc, a 
presentation that we found more effective in all departments than Miramax's own 35mm 
theatrical prints. The French dialogue is subtitled in yellow, and the image is letterboxed at 1. 85: 
1; though it looks a little tight on the top and bottom, the framing precisely replicates what we 
saw theatrically. Much improved over the theater viewing we caught is the disc's stereo surround 
mix, which allows Julie's internal orchestral surges to resonate in the viewer's own consciousness 
(not to mention breastbone), and also features a sudden knock on the door of her apartment that 
will have you jumping up to lock your own. Unlike other discs which bombard the viewer with 
multi-directional Harrier jet trajectories and gunfire, this is a program that uses its digital 
technologies to communicate the heroine's terror in moments of relative silence, as she lies in 
bed listening to the movements of a mouse in her kitchen - which she can't bring herself to kill 
because she's seen its babies. You are there.

WHITE

1993, Miramax #3039AS (LD), D/S/SS/LB, NSR (VHS), $39.99 (LD), 91m 32s

We are introduced to the vulnerable hero of this film, Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), on 
what must be the worst day of his life: he is a penniless Pole lost in Paris, whose grasp of French 
is only barely adequate to request and understand directions to the courthouse. On the steps of 
that destination, his shabby suit is struck with pigeon droppings; inside, his French wife 
Dominique (the luminous Julie Delpy) successfully argues for the annulment of their marriage, 
by publicly disclosing his sexual impotence. Afterwards, Karol's coldhearted ex dumps in the 
street a single trunk containing little more than his hairdressing diplomas, and abandons him 
without any means of returning to his homeland. In the subway station, he begs for change by 
playing mournful songs with a comb and tissue paper and makes the acquaintance of Mikolaj 
(DEKALOG 4's Janusz Gajos), a sympathetic fellow Pole, who smuggles him to Warsaw inside 
his emptied trunk. Back in his own country, in the family salon operated by his doting older 
brother Jacek (Jerzy Stuhr, again playing Zamachowski's brother as in DEKALOG 10), Karol 
licks his wounds and rebuilds his self-esteem. He then masterminds a scheme to test Dominique's 
affections, by amassing a personal fortune (partly by agreeing to kill a suicidal friend of Miolaj's, 
who lacks the courage to shoot himself and then faking his own death, to see if she will attend 
and admit her love by weeping at his funeral.

The second Three Colors film is often described as the weak link in the chain, but to condemn 
this humble and poignant comedie noir for not attaining the philosophical density of its related 
features is to ignore its own endearing qualities, to say nothing of its boundaries as an individual 
work. First of all, whereas BLUE and RED pivot on the strength of one or two central 
performances, WHITE is graced with one of the finest ensemble casts Kieslowski ever 
assembled; secondly, moreso than either BLUE or RED (whose outstanding qualities invite 
secondary viewings), WHITE demands a second viewing before a proper comprehension or 
appreciation can be reached. The film is marked with a number of "flash forward" images 
(indeed, it opens with one) to which the viewer can ascribe a context only with the second 
viewing. Perhaps Kieslowski's point with this technique is, if our comprehension does not at first 
succeed (as with Karol and Dominique's marriage), we must try again.

The film slyly proposes language as the fundamental flaw, the source of imbalance, in Karol's 
relationship with Dominique. In France, Karol is severely disadvantaged by his incomplete 
command of the language (at one point, Dominique tells him, “If I say I love you, you don't 
understand...”), whereas his return to Warsaw - despite the misery of its means - quickly 
empowers him with the drive and the savvy to become rich. In one of the film's most poignant 
moments, Karol is shown studying a French instruction record, practicing a series of tenses that 
conclude with the all-too-relevant phrase “Would that I had pleased” - which establishes a direct 
connection between his impotence and lack of language skills. In other words, his lack of 
equality. The tape and disc are subtitled in yellow and do not confuse the Polish and French 
dialogue into a single language, wisely preserving this important thematic content.

Photographed by Edward Klosinski (Andrej Wajda's MAN OF MARBLE), it would appear that 
WHITE was originally shot in a 1.66 or 1.75:1 ratio, then softmatted on American theater screens 
to 1.85:1. Miramax's disc further overmats the image to approximately 1.90: 1; the compositions, 
while tight (the security guard in the opening shot has neither hat nor feet), compare fairly well 
with those of the theatrical screening we caught. In fact, the crystalline clarity of the disc 
presentation is incomparably superior to Miramax's theatrical prints. Likewise, the stereo 
surround sound feels more responsive in an intimate home setting. The sleeve overstates Delpy's 
involvement in the narrative, showing her in a low-cut dress that never appears in the movie, and 
sells the film with a bewildering quote from COSMOPOLITAN, describing this tale of 
impotence as an “intoxicating, erotic treat.”

RED

1994, Miramax Video #4373AS (LD), D/S/SS/LB, NSR (VHS), $39.99 (LD), 98m 57s

Kieslowski and Piesiewicz's script for the trilogy's capstone is a marvel of intricacy: Valentine 
(VERONIQUE's Irene Jacob), a Swiss fashion model and student, is planning to run away from 
Geneva to England with her boyfriend Michel, to liberate herself from her troubled family - her 
brother has become a heroin addict after learning that he is not his father's son (shades of 
DEKALOG 4) - but she is disturbed by Michel's behavior, which is becoming possessive and 
stifling.4  One night, after being photographed for a gigantic chewing gum billboard (the 
product's brand name is “Hollywood”), Valentine accidentally runs over a stray German 
Shepherd while attending to car radio disturbance. She takes the injured animal to its master, a 
retired judge with the Kafkaesque name of Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant), whom she 
discovers is illegally using a shortwave radio system - the cause of her radio interference - to 
eavesdrop on the telephone conversations of his neighbors. A naive and conscientious young 
woman, Valentine expresses her disgust, telling Kern that it isn't fair for him to intrude upon 
people's privacy. “My point of view is better than a court room,” he responds, because it has 
taught him that the world isn't fair, that there is no Right or Wrong, that to judge other people for 
their actions is indicative of a “lack of modesty.”

“Vanity,” the model concurs.

A complementary couple, this: Kern is detached from the world by his involvement in its secrets, 
while Valentine, on the verge of abandoning her own family, feels a righteous urge to take the 
world's burdens onto her own shoulders. Impressed by her moral sincerity, Kern voluntarily shuts 
off his shortwave and informs his neighbors of his past spying, prepared to accept the 
consequences. Impressed by his wayward resolve, Valentine forms a bond with the older man, in 
whom she confides her feeling that “something important is happening around me... and it scares 
me.”

Interwoven with this narrative thread is another, in which a young law student named Auguste 
(JeanPierre Lorit) prepares for his final law exams (as Krzysztof Globisz in DEKALOG 5).  In a 
series of vignettes, we see him drop his law books at a street intersection (where Valentine's 
billboard will soon appear), which causes one of the books to open on a page that will help him 
to pass his test. He is infatuated with Karin (Frederique Feder), a young woman who runs a 
telephone service for “Personal Weather Reports,” who inexplicably betrays him with another 
man. Unknown to Auguste, Kern has eavesdropped on their conversations and, having found 
them “not right for each other,” “arranged” Karin's initial meeting with this other man. (Kern 
lives virtually next door to Karin, as Valentine unknowingly lives next door to Auguste.) The 
self-confessed spy then becomes the defendant in the first case August hears as a judge.

As heavy storm winds converge on the eve of her departure for England, Valentine listens 
intently as Kern confides to her the pivotal story of his disillusionment, which closely parallels 
the romantic betrayal that Auguste has been experiencing. To complete the formation of this 
mysterious, human constellation, the unexpected occurs - and we understand that Kern has also 
used his god-like vantage to orchestrate the fateful meeting of the man he once was and “the girl 
[he] never met.”

A film about attentiveness, RED makes extraordinary demands on our watchfulness - and 
rewards them. Moreso than its companion features, its eponymous color is used not only with 
great emphasis in its art direction, but also with applications that feel superstitious, if not 
supernatural. Valentine (whose own name suggests the color, as did “Veronique”) plays a slot 
machine each day at a corner shop; when we meet her, her life is so typically happy that the 
(unusual) winning appearance of three cherries portends bad luck.5 Elsewhere, Auguste (who 
lives adjacent to the heroine) is shown missing an important call from his girlfriend by running 
downstairs to the same store for a red pack of Marlboros. (in BLUE, presumably, he would have 
run out of Gitanes.)

Beyond its uses of color, the film relates and evaluates its characters in a series of moments that 
may be easily overlooked. For example, when he decides to go to England, Auguste cruelly 
abandons his long-suffering dog on the side of the road, and the camera attends the animal's 
bewilderment long enough to make it indelible; we see Auguste drive away, brake at the corner... 
and then arrive at the ferry carrying his pet, a rescue from which the camera cuts away so quickly 
that it may not quite register, in the midst of so many converging emotions, on the first viewing.  
In retrospect, one feels that, had Auguste left the dog tied to the curb, he would not have 
deserved to meet Valentine and, somehow, they would not have met.

Kern's demoralizing attention to the broadcasts of his unwitting neighbors (and by the way, is 
Valentine herself among them, as she is tormented by the petty and jealous telephonings of 
Michel?) reminds one of John Cheever's “The Enormous Radio,” a classic short story which has 
influenced a number of other films, notably Woody Allen's ANOTHER WOMAN (1988).  
Whereas the hero of Cheever's story is morally defiled by his eavesdropping, Kern is less 
affected than he knows. On the surface, he revels in his desiccation, inviting Valentine to snap 
his suspenders (“They make such a lovely sound”) and tipping hot water from his teapot onto the 
floor, as if openly urinating on his own invitation to tea; yet in his resolve to pass judgment on no 
one, Kern seems to reside outside, and perhaps above, the petty melodramas of his neighbors. 
(They are not so fair in return, six of them taking it upon themselves to cast stones through his 
windows.) In his earthly yet quasi-supernatural omniscience, he reminds us of the Old Gods 
sewn inside human skins in Harry Kumel's MALPERTUIS (1972), or better yet, of Louis 
Feuillade's crimefighting judge Judex, grown seedy, misanthropic and disillusioned, all but 
detached in his old age.

For all his years of contemplating the subject, the matters of truth and righteousness are lost on 
Kern until Valentine enters his life. The most purehearted of all Kieslowski heroines, Valentine 
is the character which his trilogy (and, by extension, his entire filmography) has been patiently 
awaiting: it is she alone who finally comes to the aid of the bent, old people seen in BLUE and 
WHITE, who cannot stand straight enough to deposit their glass bottles in the high openings of 
the public recycling bins. Her moral stance, her quality of self-inquiry, her acute sense of 
responsibility, her complete lack of vanity and pretension - these character traits make Valentine 
seem an unlikely candidate for a career in modelling, but it would seem that Kieslowski is using 
the milieu of haute couture to propose her, in a more fantastic vein, as a worthy role model for 
society. We see this when Kern leaves his hermitage for the first time in years; a man who has 
learned to regard his fellow men at skull value (knowing only the ugly face behind society's 
mask), he ventures out and, while pausing at an intersection, sees Valentine's billboard and learns 
for the first time that this open-hearted girl exists for the city at large as a kind of symbol. He 
smiles at the advertisement, perhaps realizing that any society that can hold her in such regard is 
not ready to be forsaken. As for Valentine, it is telling that she never goes to see her own 
billboard, which would mean a false celebration of “vanity.”

Irene Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant are transfixing as Valentine and Kern, and the aching, 
formal chemistry between them - they seem to meet on a symbolic plane - makes RED one of the 
most gripping accounts of platonic love ever filmed. Jacob's casting, in particular, could not be 
more appropriate; it was she in THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE who observed an old 
woman burdened with heavy bags and called out a fraternal offer of assistance.

As with its two predecessors, RED contains glimpses of characters first met in BLUE and 
WHITE. As Kern awaits his day of judgment in the courthouse, we can see an auburn-haired 
attorney in the distance who might be Sandrine - the dead composer's mistress from BLUE 
(Florence Pernel is not listed in the end credits). And then there is the film's finale, in which all 
of the trilogy's stars are assembled together in a violent coincidence. (As elegant as this package 
bow may be, one can't help questioning how Dominique and Karol Karol could be present, 
because WHITE ends on a note that makes us doubt that Dominique would be at liberty, or that 
Karol - having faked his own death-would be traveling under his real name.)

Multiple viewings of RED, while increasing its enjoyment and meaningfulness exponentially, 
may also bring to one's attention a number of elliptical narrative jumps. There is Valentine's 
discovery of a Van Den Budenmayer recording in Kern's house, which they do not discuss, but 
which for some reason compels her to visit a listening booth in a record store and try to buy the 
album, which has sold out.6 There are also scenes in which the characters move, in the blink of a 
splice, from standing to sitting positions. There is also the matter of Kern's trial, of which we do 
not learn the final outcome. As with its unofficial companion feature, THE DOUBLE LIFE OF 
VERONIQUE, Kieslowski seems to cut away from the most concrete moments of the story at 
hand to emphasize his belief that the actual lines of reality are less interesting than what dwells 
between them.

Miramax's laserdisc is perhaps the most successful of their Three Colors transfers. It is 
letterboxed at 1.85: 1, with Piotr Sobocinski's elaborate crane shots and color-coded mise en 
scene looking superbly well-balanced and unencumbered. The stereo surround mix leaves the 
dialogue mostly centered, while giving the directional treatment to Zbigniew Preisner's 
momentous score, duck-and-cover thunderstorms and other acts of God.

An extended exercise in existential suspense, ultimately more millenic than apocalyptic, RED 
poises its viewers near the edge of an undisclosed precipice, sweeping them along in the magical 
momentum of Preisner's bracing bolero score. The fact that such a scary and extended 
premonition is allowed to culminate happily is enough to not only bring a parting tear of relief to 
Kern's grizzled, stony face, but to restore even the most cynical moviegoer's faith in cinema.

NOTES

1. The ending, as it appears on Paramount Home Video, was amended specifically for the 
American market.  Kiestowski: “At a certain moment during its screening at the New York Film 
Festival, I realized that the people in America were absolutely baffled by the ending of the film. 
There's a scene in which Veronique returns to her family home where her father is still living.  
The scene is very enigmatically done and it’s not made obvious that it’s the family home she’s 
returning to, but I don't think that anybody in Europe has any doubt... For us, Europeans, going 
back to the family home represents a certain value which exists in our traditions, in our history 
and also in our culture. You can find it in THE ODYSSEY, and literature, theatre and art through 
the ages... Particularly for us Poles, who are very romantic, the family home is an essential point 
in our lives. And that’s why I ended the film as I did. But I realized that nobody understood it in 
America... [The] idea of a family home as a place through which successive generations pass is 
inconceivable to [Americans] because they're constantly changing where they live”. 
(KIESLOWSKI ON KIESLOWSKI, pp. 7-8.)

The original cut concludes with Veronique touching the tree and her father slowly raising his 
head from his workbench, aware of her presence; the American version (also on video in the UK) 
adds 1m of footage in which the father steps outside, calls to his daughter, and Veronique runs 
into his arms.

2. Virgin’s domestic CD is adorned with the original art from the French release, and is 
sometimes misfiled in stores under the French spelling: BLEU. The CD also includes two 
boleros from RED.

3. On Touchstone’s BLUE laserdisc, these cameos can be found during Chapter 11: 
Zamachowski is first seen at 25:36-40, Delpy at 25:46-50, and the courtroom scene occurs, more 
obviously, at 26:05-24 with Zamachowski asking the judge, “is it because I don't speak French 
that the court can't hear my case?” On Mirdmax’s WHITE disc, Binoche pokes her head into the 
courtroom in Chapter 2, at 5:13-17, but here Karol’s question follows her brief intrusion.

4. Michel phones Valentine from the road while on vacation, and we take pleasure in overhearing 
that he was robbed in Poland - not only because we suspect that the thieves were the same who 
unwittingly stole the suitcase containing Karol in WHITE, but because the bastard deserves it.

5. One possible explanation for the film’s inverted view of luck may be that the three cherries 
represent, for Kieslowski, conformity and a lack of diversity. Elsewhere in the film, there is a 
recurrent but seemingly incomplete use of the number 7. Rita has seven puppies, there are seven 
survivors of a ferry disaster, but six - not seven - stones are thrown through Kern’s windows. The 
stones are the unhappy exception to the other two joyous events, so perhaps this is Kieslowski 
and Piesiewicz’s way of paralleling Valentine’s bad-luck cherries with a numerical 7-7-6, 
indicating that Valentine’s good luck has been restored.

6 As Valentine leaves the store, a snippet of the tango from WHITE can be heard, among much 
other conflicting music, in the background. Indeed, on the RED soundtrack itself [Virgin 
#724383986026. 42m 3s]. the music is credited to Zbigniew Preisner... “except tracks 8 and 13 
[“Do Not Take Another Man’s Wife” I and II] composed by Van Den Budenmayer.” The disc 
also includes a song not heard in the film, “Love At First Sight,” sung by WHITE's Zbigniew 
Zamachowski.

Anyone wishing to know more about these films and the full range of Kieslowski's impressive 
work is directed to KIESLOWSKI ON KIESLOWSKI (Faber & Faber, $22.95 hardcover, $14.95 
softcover, 268 pages), a book of interviews conducted and edited by Danusia Stok. The first 100 
pages are devoted almost entirely to Kieslowski's early life and career as a documentary 
filmmaker, increasing one's appetite to see this elusive body of work. The chapters about the 
better-known feature films are fascinating for the degree to which they reveal Kieslowski as an 
instinctive filmmaker, as unconscious of why he made certain decisions as he seems unaware of 
their ultimate yield. Either he's a very cagey guy, or it's true that some films are directed as much 
by forces of Nature as by the individuals who sign them. A superbly thorough piece of work, 
making it all the more regrettable that the Three Colors interviews were conducted after they 
were filmed, but prior to their editing - when Kieslowski wasn't really sure of what he'd captured.  
One hopes the book will someday be updated to include the director's thoughts on the finished 
oeuvre.

(c) 1995 by Tim Lucas