019 - Three Colors: Red, 1994, France, Poland; Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

019 - Three Colors: Red, 1994, France, Poland. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski.

People have a right to their secrets.

Valentine makes this assertion to the Judge who sits before her.  She is judging him.

The Judge is retired.  He uses technology to eavesdrop on his neighbors.  Everyone needs a hobby.

They have just heard a live telephone conversation between a man and his lover, a man, upstairs in the house next door, as his wife cooks dinner downstairs, and, we find later, his daughter downstairs listens in on another phone.

Valentine is disgusted.  The Judge asserts that it will all come out in the open anyway.

He is bitter.  He spent a lifetime sitting on the bench, sending people away, now unsure whether he was on the side of right or wrong.  At least when he listens to people's conversations, he knows what the truth is.  So he says.

Once he freed a man who turned out to be guilty.  The man went on to live a good life.  Valentine encourages him.  You did the right thing.  He challenges her.  How many other times did he get it wrong?  How many good people did he send away?  How many bad people did he set free?  Who is good and who is bad anyway?

Film is a kind of voyeurism.  The viewers view the lives of other people, as the characters are living it, as though we are peeking in.  What about an audio voyeur (an entendrer!)?  What about hearing the lives of other people?

Listen.

Valentine is standing in his den because she brought his dog to him.  She hit the dog with her car and took it to the vet.  Then she brought it to him and he gave it to her.  She took it for a walk and it broke free and returned home.  She went looking for it and found herself back here.

The dog's name is Rita.

Later this year we will watch the David Lynch film Mulholland Dr.  In that movie there has been a car crash, and a woman takes refuge in an apartment.  She has amnesia and cannot remember her name.  So when she sees a poster of Rita Heyworth as Gilda, she adopts the name Rita.

I hear that German Shepherds are loyal to their owners.  Rita is loyal.  She returns to The Judge.

Valentine is also loyal.  She is a model.  In one day she has a photo shoot, ballet classes, and a runway show.  The photo shoot produces a billboard for chewing gum.  It is large.  The photographer hits on her.  She rebuffs him.  She is loyal to her boyfriend Michel.

Michel does not seem to understand or appreciate her loyalty.  He calls her frequently.  He is never around.  She keeps missing the phone.  He accuses her of being with someone else.  She is not.

Valentine listens to music at a CD store.  She is also a listener.  This is at least the third movie out of the first 19 we have been watching where a music store has come into play.  She asks for CD number 432, Van den Budenmayer.  They have just sold the last one.  Timing matters in this movie.

Standing next to her, without her knowing it, is her neighbor Auguste, the one who drives the red Jeep, the one who dates the woman who is the neighbor of the judge.  He and his girlfriend are also listening to CDs.  Throughout the movie Valentine and Auguste, who live so near each other, pass but never meet.  If only they knew each other.  If only they would meet.

Where Three Colors: White focuses on human choice, free will, Three Colors: Red seems to allow for fate, circumstance, near hits, near misses.

Have you seen the movie Sliding Doors?  It follows Gwyneth Paltrow in two different possible lives.  She walks down the stairs to the subway, and the doors close.  In one story the doors close ahead of her and she misses the train.  In the other story the doors close just behind her and she catches her train.  We watch both stories play out, showing how vastly different, and yet strangely similar, her life would be based on the outcome of a split second.

Three Colors: Red has a similar feel.  Valentine keeps missing her boyfriend's phone call, by a split second.  What if she had picked up the phone?  She keeps missing her neighbor Auguste by split seconds.  What if they had met?

She is loyal to her boyfriend, but he mistrusts her and so mistreats her.  Auguste is loyal to his girlfriend, but she cheats on him.  The good people are dating the bad people.  What if they were with each other?  Auguste drives past Valentine's billboard and smiles at it.  He likes her.  If only he knew she was his neighbor.

Kieslowski explores the doppelganger.  A doppelganger is a spiritual double.  It is like having a twin in the world, only instead of a biological twin, it is a spiritual twin.

We will see it played out more literally in The Double Life of Veronique, his film also starring Irene Jacob, who plays Valentine here.  There she is like Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors, only instead of living different lives based on the split second of the doors closing, she lives different lives in two different countries--Veronique in France, Weronika in Poland.  In other words, what if the same person, or two of the same type of person, or two spiritual twins, grew up in different countries?  How would that affect the outcome of his life?

Here the spiritual doubles, the doppelgangers, are of separate ages.

Auguste and the Judge are living the same life but in different generations.  Both are in law school.  Both drop their books and look down to pick them up.  Both see the answer to the prime question they will be asked on their law exam.  Both pass their law exam because this accident happened.  Both get a special pen they use throughout their careers.  Both love a woman who cheats on them.

Will Auguste grow bitter, as the Judge has?  Will he become an apathetic, eavesdropping recluse?  Or will his life take a different turn, passing through a different door?

Auguste's girlfriend has started a business where she gives you personalized weather when you call her on the phone.  She is a living Siri.  When called about the weather in the English Channel this weekend, she states that it will be excellent.  She giggles.  She herself will be crossing the Channel this weekend, with her boyfriend, not Auguste, but the one with whom she is cheating on Auguste.

The weather is cross.

A storm arises.  It beats against the world.  The ferry capsizes.  1,435 people were aboard.  Only seven survive.

Only seven.

Who are the survivors?

Not Auguste's girlfriend.  Not the man with whom she is cheating.

Who?

One is the ship's bartender.

Who are the other six?  Three pairs.  Not necessarily couples.  They did not all take the ferry together.  But three pairs.

Who?

Watch and see.

Listen and hear.

And discover the Three Colors.