Blue

Krzysztof Kieslowski, the famed polish director, concluded his career with an ambitious masterpiece made up of three interconnected movies: Blue, White, and Red. Each film is named after a color of the French flag. Blue represents freedom. White stands for equality. Red is fraternity. Each film explores its color's core concept in intriguing, often ironic, ways. 

Blue starts with the sound of cars. An image of a freeway follows. The camera focuses on one car, and observes it, mainly from the outside. The intense ambient noises of the racing cars becomes unsettling. A child extends her hand out the window, holding a blue candy-wrapper that can be heard fluttering in the wind. Her ghostlike face can be seen through the windows of the car, but never directly. The car stops, and the girl gets out. Kieslowski cuts to a shot from beneath the car where some oil trickles down unnoticed. A voice can be heard calling to the child. Cut to a shot of the departing car. Cut to a young man by the side of the road, hoping to catch a ride. The car passes him by without stopping. The camera lingers on him. The style is simple and direct -- each different action gets only one shot -- and serves solely to create a sense of mounting dread. The crash takes place off screen; it it conveyed, as the most important elements of the movie, through the soundtrack. Blue represents freedom. Julie is freed from family. 

While Julie recovers at the hospital, she finds out that her husband and daughter died on the car crash. The audience sympathizes instantly, but is kept at a distance by Julie, just as she tries to do with all others around her. She feels hopeless and tries to commit suicide, but she is unable to end her life. She holds on to some unexplained reason to keep going, so she keeps on living. Kieslowski could be described as a pessimist, but that would be grossly inaccurate. He fascinates because he never fully gives up hope in his characters. They are always redeemable, even when they reach their lowest points. 

Julie sells her house, gets rid of all of her possessions and moves to an empty apartment in Paris for a fresh start. For a while, she lives alone, and talks to no one. From her window, she sees a man being beaten by three others. She wishes to help him as he runs past her front door, but ultimately she remains motionless inside her safe apartment. Soon after, she helps a neighbor in need and shows kindness to a homeless man. Behind the steely facade is a decent human being beginning  to resurface. 

Kieslowski's films are filled with chance encounters and near-misses. Had the young man from the start of the movie taken a ride on that car, he would have been dead. Instead, he lives. Seemingly out of the blue, he finds Julie and reminds her what happened that day. He is Julie's remaining link to her past life, so Julie treats him suspiciously, almost aggressively  He found Julie to give her a crucifix that he recovered from the crash site. He also wanted to give her the last words her husband said to her: "Now try coughing." It is the punchline of a joke her husband was telling. It seems like a throwaway line, but earlier in the movie, Julie asserts that she is human because she sweats, cries and coughs. 

But after the initial shock of the accident, she stops being human, she dulls the pain and tries to escape, leaving her remaining friends and relatives behind. Julie uses her new, minimalist apartment, and endless swimming bouts to escape and forget, to attain freedom from her family and her memories. Still, they come rushing back to her, because that young man never got in the car. All of a sudden, the things she was running from start to catch up to her and overwhelm her. 

Her husband was a composer. He was writing a symphony for the unification of Europe. Whenever she thinks of him or her child, the rousing music overtakes the soundtrack. The screen fades to black and all that remains is the music. Julie still seeks to escape, yet she hears it even when she is deep under water where she thinks no one can reach her. The music keeps coming back in different forms. She sees in the news that her husband's friend will seek to finish the piece. She thought she had destroyed the last copy, but it somehow survived. At one point, it is suggested that Julie wrote the music, and thus cannot get rid of it so easily since it invades her consciousness. 

It takes a while, but Julie starts giving in. She visits her ailing mother in a nursing home and kindly helps her husband's pregnant mistress. She even contributes to finishing the symphony. Her "freedom," was a form of self defense; selfish, perhaps, but who can blame her? Once she confronts the aspects of her life she would most like to forget, she finally begins to move forward and evolve. Throughout the movie, Juliette Binoche shows very little emotion. Her character is made comprehensible by the images and sounds presented by the director. But in the final seconds of the movie, Binoche breaks Julie's facade. She smiles.  

Random Thoughts.
-In all three films the main characters see a woman trying to place a bottle into a recycling bin. Julie does not help her.
- The protagonist of White can be seen here. The lives of the characters in the three movies are interconnected although it is not clear until the third movie.
- Red is the best. 

-At one of her lowest points, a reckless Julie tries to hurt herself by dragging her knuckles through a stone wall. Without a single word of dialogue, Kieslowski and Binonche convey just how much in need of help Julie really is. Although not very graphic, this is one of the most painful images I've seen. 

-There is little warmth in the visuals. The color blue invades the screen every shot of the movie. It perfectly conveys the unbearable sadness caused by Julie's tremendous loss.

-I don't know what to make of it, but my favorite shot of the movie is this image of a black coffee stain completely overtaking a white little sugar cube:

Verdict- 4/4 

Blue (1993) 1h 38min. R