Drei Farben - Rot

You hurt a dog when out driving when distracted, you find the owner but he's totally refracted, an eavesdropper, retired judge, set in his ways and cannot budge, you are appalled at how his life is being enacted. Your encounter leads to more as you connect, get the chance to interact and to inspect, events unfold and the judge changes, adjusts the focus of his ranges, to each other there's a noticeable effect.

It's a wonderful performance from Irène Jacob in a multithreaded tale of friendship and connection. As with Blue, you can spin any number of interpretations from the symbolism and imagery, and will quite probably come to any number of conflicting conclusions. The whole trilogy wraps itself up at the close and might allow you to tie off a few loose ends, or may leave you with more.

This is the last film of Krzysztof Kieslowski - one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema. He intended to retire after this film, so in a way it is his artistic testament. He died a couple of years after making the film, and though it is said that he intended to return to directing, Destiny decided that this was indeed his last. And what a film!

'Rouge' the last film in the three colors French trilogy is actually a very Swiss film. Set in Geneva, one of the two main characters is a Swiss retired judge, and Durenmatt immediately comes to mind. But there is more Switzerland in the cool atmosphere, in the lack of communication of the characters, in the politeness that envelops cruelty of life. Several characters who start with little relationship will come together at the end in a moving and human final, which only a great artist could have staged.

Little else can be said that was not said and written hundred of times. Yes, the film starts slowly, and the fans of the American style of action movies or melodramas will get discouraged first and will get lost as viewers. They deserve it. The film gets quality as it advances, and one of the not so hidden messages is that real life and real humans are more interesting than the Hollywood cartoon and plastic action and characters. Cinema quality is very original, the image being a 'Study in Red', as the title shows. Acting is fabulous, with Irene Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant - the later in what will remain probable the best role of his old age.

A great film. Seeing it again probably adds, and I am happy to have it recorded on tape. 9/10 on my personal scale.

The final and most haunting of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's (Oscar-nominated) "Three Colors" Trilogy. "Red" completed a trilogy which paid homage to France and also sent a gift of philosophy and originality to the world cinema. It is once again modern-day France and a beautiful young model (the illuminating Irene Jacob) accidentally runs over a dog in her car. She discovers the dog belongs to an old retired court judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant). Trintignant is an elderly man who is a natural cynic and proves that the world is not what it seems by spying on all those around him in the neighborhood (even going so far as tapping into others' phone conversations). Jacob and Trintignant then go on an emotional journey together to learn that we are all connected in this topsy-turvy world. Thus the film ends up representing the French flag's red which shows the nation's fraternity. In the end the series is wrapped up with the strangest of twists that admittedly feels a little a forced. All three films in the trilogy are neatly tied together and that is really the only problem I had with this otherwise fine motion picture. Kieslowski and long-time co-writer Krzysztof Piesecwicz (Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominees in 1994) put a yellow ribbon on a strong professional partnership that always toed the line of greatness and went over the top here. When the "Three Colors" Trilogy was completed, Kieslowski (who had dominated the French and Polish cinema for nearly 25 years) vowed that he would never work again in movies. Sadly that would become a reality as the famed director would die in 1996, still in his mid-50s. Krzysztof Kieslowski's works are highly deep and very philosophical in all major respects. His trilogy was a fitting conclusion to a wonderful career and "Red" is a crowning achievement to one the finest film-makers who ever lived. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Kieslowski gives us a tapestry of interwoven stories in this, his last turn. I welcome films of this kind that go on to show how, if no life exists in isolation, then our troubles don't either, they have roots that surge forward and back, and so there's a road that leads out of the thicket.

Blue was about memory, how the past surfaces to color reality. White was about desire, how the imagined future surfaces to color reality. This is something else, even more penetrating in its coloration of reality, in my opinion the best of the three and Kieslowski's crowning jewel. He would retire after.

It begins with an opening shot of phone wires running between interconnected lives, carrying voices and stories that circle the ether. We then begin with two lives on the same street and how they begin to interconnect. One of the ensuing threads is self- referential about Kieslowski.

A chance confluence of stories brings a young woman to the house of an old man, Kieslowski himself. Retired "judge" and spends his time eavesdropping in the lives of people, inserting himself as observer of stories. In his days as judge he similarly inserted himself in the stories of people brought before him, deciding right from wrong. Now he no longer feels the need to arrive at verdicts, he simply observes the coming and going.

One scene revolves around her discovering his habit and how it's a wretched thing to do. How dare he insinuate himself in the secrets of people? Also self-referential, Kieslowski critiquing the job of presuming to know peoples' innermost selves.

Better than personal commentary, this is self-referential in a larger way about observing and living a life that has to make sense of how stories and images surround us. Kieslowski does some of his best work in ushering us along that path, all of the Dekalog pays off here.

The old man not just as cynically indifferent observer but as someone who has given up on life, broken by something in his past. Now he has taken up the habit of vicariously inhabiting other peoples' stories as substitute for a lack of his own. What we have is a narrator at the center of narratives. Someone who is burdened with the memory of dashed dreams. Someone who lives in the mind, the mind as this house of fictions.

The way Kieslowski decenters the reality of what happens next is magical. Something more mysterious is starting to take place, isn't it?

Not all narratives are innocuous the old man shows us, or express a simple truth. There's a neglected old mother somewhere who lies to her daughter about having a heart- attack to get her to visit. In a court that punished lying she would be found guilty; but she only wants the company of her daughter. We see here how narratives (including dreams and memory) are extensions of self, ways of bringing close to us something we need.

And then Kieslowski shifts again. Only now can he begin to show us how not everything that we see is actually taking place. He makes it a point for example to reveal that he never climbed on the top floor of her house like in the bizarre scene that we saw earlier (he saw her in a mirror). The book didn't fly open to a certain page in the middle of a street but in an auditorium.

Some of it may be an old man's story that reinvents in order to reveal, some of it might be dreamlike fantasy. But precisely the point isn't to say what is true and what not. To decide what is true would be to show a great lack of humility, the judge says. The sailor in his story may have been guilty; but not convicting him allowed him to live a peaceful life.

It culminates in a marvelous scene in an empty theater with doors flying open by the wind. But the way Kieslowski has decentered us from rigid truth, we can surge through a whole life to see many possible ones now. Is this his dream from 20 years later and he's going to wake up next to her? Is it a confrontation between her and him about an affair, taking on this dreamlike shape? Is it about finding her or losing her?

Lynch was not forthcoming about whether or not Kieslowski was an influence when bluntly asked. But I believe that part of Inland Empire is set in Lodz (where Kieslowski went to film school) for a reason, a more eloquently playful acknowledgement. He would take us so very far.

The final part of Kieslowski's trilogy based on the colors of the French flag finds the director at peace with the metaphysical and transcendent nature of the cinematic image. In Red, imagery is paramount, as well as the obvious but clever color coding. However, rather than adhering to empty aesthetic contrivances based on the 'cinema du look', Kieslowski's Red is a multi-layered, densely plotted meditation on the nature of fate and love. In Red, love and fate are intertwined but complex notions, dictated as much by the whims of human beings as the invisible parallel associations that seems to pass us by. You sense Red is really an allegory, a reenactment of Prospero's omnipresent gestures in The Tempest, yet it is more than its story appears. Red demands countless viewings, and in each viewing something new is discovered that weaves itself into the already immaculately plotted structure.

Although Red stands alone as a masterwork from Kieslowski, it's best viewed as part of the trilogy. Elements of Blue and White are referenced in Red, which knowing viewers will enjoy.