Kieslowski’s ‘Three Colors’: What a beautiful trilogy | Culture

There is a poem that begins by saying something as devastating as: “When nothing is expected that is personally exciting anymore.” This is the feeling that has been assailing me for too long when I watch the vast majority of films, as long as they are dispensable. And for me, cinema has always been something personal, something that can feed the soul, give priceless sensations. But the discouragement is alarming when looking at the billboard. And tradition confirms that the programming during the month of July and until the end of August is in love with sales and uninspiring things.

It is therefore a very pleasant surprise that a trilogy by a Polish director named Krzysztof Kieslowski is being re-released in cinemas. He is always disturbing, dark and luminous, a transmitter of emotions and stories that are as disturbing as they are unpredictable, and who has a powerful and inimitable visual style. Film festivals, always so suspicious in their consideration of artistic, auteur cinema, drooling over cultural trends, most of which are so ephemeral and tiresome, adored the films of this man, but Kieslowski was also capable of surprising and touching the emotional fibre of many ordinary spectators. Without making concessions, creating an enigmatic and moving universe.

Kieslowski initially startled me with You will not love and Thou shalt not kill. Also with The double life of Veronica and the question of whether humans can meet a double of ourselves. And I fell in love with it straight away Three colors: Blue, White and Red. Not only because of its plots and the aesthetics with which they are narrated. Also because of two of its female protagonists. Juliette Binoche in Blue and Irène Jacob in Red. The pretext to re-release this memorable trilogy, which will begin with Blue on around twenty screens across the country, because the copies have been digitalized. Any excuse is good enough to feel enchanted in a movie theater. And I know that these films may appear in the catalog of some platform, or that some of us still keep their memory in DVD and Blu-ray formats, but it can be nice to recover them in their natural space.

Blue The film tells of a woman broken by the accidental death of her husband, a brilliant classical music composer, and her daughter. Her inconsolable depression is followed by other chilling discoveries about the deceased’s double life, which left behind a piece that looked like a masterpiece. Kieslowski and his usual co-writer, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, portray loneliness, emotional paralysis and the devastation of the soul as has rarely been done in the history of cinema. Also the miraculous resurrection in the name of generosity. Images and sounds work with a dazzling harmony. White It’s very strange for a long time and in the end everything makes sense. It’s the story of a man abandoned by his wife in Paris and who begins a new and tortuous existence in Poland in his obsession to win her back. It’s an understandable love story. And Red It shows the complicated relationship between a young and pure model, emotionally bewildered, and a retired judge, fiercely lonely, misogynistic and unbelieving, who never leaves his house and spends his time spying on the misery of his neighbors through their windows and tapping their phones.

I miss the films made by this director, who was as lucid and lyrical as he was disturbing. The atmospheres he created, his carnality, his spirituality. And I was amazed when someone so singular and profound repeated three plates of beans during a dinner in San Sebastian. He did not disdain alcohol either. His films were tormented and sometimes mystical, but his appetites were very human. How wonderful.

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