A Fraternidade é Vermelha

The last film in the Three Colors trilogy, RED, is deceptively simple, yet it rounds out everything that came before in an enlightening way. It slightly resembles THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE in its theme of fraternity, and in its casting of Irene Jacob, who manages to exude a sense of curious innocence and integrity. She interprets the role of Valentine, a young Swiss model and student living in Geneva and experiencing a kind of emotional limbo as she awaits her boyfriend's return from England. Through a seemingly trivial twist of fate, she encounters a cynical retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who leads a lonely, world weary existence and eavesdrops on his neighbors' telephone conversations. Initially she finds his detached indifference appalling, and wants to report him, but her compassionate nature enables her to comprehend the greater plight of the man, one of leading a fruitless, lovelorn life. They form a touching friendship, and this sets the stage for another turn of events. Auguste (Jean-Pierre Lorit) is young judge who is in many ways a mirror image of Trintignant's character. He lives near Valentine, but through possible lack of synchronicity, they never meet. Upheavals in his life are accordingly similar to the old judge's, but this time, due to the presence of the noble Valentine, an old adversity can be turned on its side, bringing fulfillment for everyone.

With Red, there is a real sense of culmination unlike any other. Wistful, melancholy, yet life-affirming, the film offers hope in world full of supposed mistaken paths. Tritignant remarked on Kieslowski's talents in augmenting the emotions of the actors through his technique: "I'm very pleased with my work on this film - and I don't think it had a lot to do with me. For example, at the end of the film when my character goes to the window, looks outside, and starts to cry - I couldn't do it, I couldn't summon the tears. I tried to make myself cry but couldn't manage it. Krzysztof called the make-up lady who shot menthol into my eyes. We shot the scene and Krzysztof said 'It's good, next shot.' Recently I saw the finished film. I waited anxiously for this scene. And I cried when I saw myself."

Tritignant's nuanced portrayal is augmented by equally good work from Jacob who bears insight into her role as well: "Something really great about RED are the 'non-encounters' between Auguste and Valentine. They pass each other without ever meeting. They might be great for each other but they never meet. It reminds me of THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE where the two identical Veroniques are face to face but don't see each other. In RED this idea is reflected by the way Valentine can't face up to her life, her love, her sorrows. How can Auguste see her, or she him? How can they both release themselves from this blindness?"

The uplifting aura of this film shines even brighter given the pettiness with which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences brushed it off. Due to the fact that is a multinational co-production, with a Polish director, mixed Swiss and French cast and crew, Red was not allowed to compete for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar as a film from Switzerland. Indeed, the trilogy itself is without a country as it transcends borders and even culture in its solemn inquiry into human nature and that is a prize in itself.

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.

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.

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.

It is not only difficult to comment separately on the three parts of Kieslowski's trilogy, it seems obvious that the filmmaker wants us to do just the opposite: view them in order, Blue, White, and Red, and consider them together as one complete work. It is true they are distinct stories with distinct themes: liberty, equality, fraternity, and each them is developed with unique applications of intrigue and artistry. They are each well worth seeing independently, but I believe they are best seen as one work. Collectively, I would rate the trilogy as a 9; separately, I place each in my top ten for the years 1993 and 1994.

The color red is most memorable in the third movie as a backdrop in a billboard ad, the profiled model of which is the central of the movie's three main characters. The other two characters do a double-take of a varying degree of recognition when they first come upon the ad, posted larger than life alongside a busy city intersection. This ad is not a major part of the plot of this movie, yet its image becomes striking and is one of the reasons I have called Red a `mind-bending' film. This is the third of Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy, based on the Blue-White-Red of the French flag and the three parts of its motto, `Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The films stay primarily focused on these themes, keeping with the basic levels of one, two, or three main characters, yet with each film the complexity of plot escalates as the three principles move from fundamentally personal (Liberty, Blue) to relational (Equality, White) to social (Fraternity, Red). Red is my favorite of these films, and I give it a 9. It stands by itself as a great film, but one should see Blue and White first for the fullest effect.