A film on 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 - a Biblical chapter on love & maturity

Our Rating: 9.5

IMDb Ratings : 7 .6

Genre: Comedy | Drama | Mystery

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Benoît Régent, Julie Delpy

Country: France | Poland | Switzerland

Language: French

Runtime: 98 min

Color: Color

—a ten-episode television series with each of the ten episodes trying to explore and interpret one of the Ten Commandments through the means of a short fictional story. In fact, a very few would disagree that the ‘Three Colors Trilogy’ and the ‘Decalogue' are two of the greatest and most consummate manifestations of human expressions in the whole of cinema.

. The "Three Colors" trilogy is widely considered as Kieslowski’s greatest work along with his

loosely based on the French ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity as represented by the French tricolor—the next two being Three Colors: White (1994) and Three Colors: Red (1994), respectively. The screenplay of all the three films in the trilogy was co-written by Kieslowski and his longtime collaborator

In Three Colors: Blue, Kieslowski tackles the subject of liberty—albeit emotional and not political or social—through the means of a bereaved Parisian woman named Julie whose life serves to be a microcosmic representation of the contemporary human society. Julie escapes death during a macabre car crash that claims the life of her husband and her only child. Devastated by her colossal loss, she makes an unsuccessful suicide attempt. After getting discharged from the hospital, with the hope of curtailing her tribulation, she deliberately tries to seclude herself from whatever is left of her former life. But, the more she tries the more she finds her incapable of freeing herself from the human connections. Kieslowski succeeds in projecting liberty as an emotional paradox: the more one yearns for it the more one gets entangled in the endless uncertainties of life.

Kieslowski's cinema, propagated by its subtle use of metaphors, allegories and symbolisms, is noted not for its sustained grandeur but for its fragmented moments of brilliance. And the metaphysical, theological and spiritual allusions are so deftly blended that a less keen viewer may easily overlook them. Music plays a pivotal part in Kieslowski's cinema. The real beauty of his cinema is its deceptive simplicity that’s augmented by abundance of colors and the dearth of dialog. Little by little, the viewer is sucked inside this painfully plain world until he becomes a part of it. And his reclusive characters merely serve the purpose of mirrors while their futile actions are a means to help us identify our follies. Three Colors: Blue has all the elements of quintessential Kieslowski cinema. Behind the veneer of simplicity lies a profound work of cinema that bears witness to Kieslowski’s cinematic genius. It’s indeed sad that Kieslowski died at a young age of 54, just two years after the completion of The Three Colors Trilogy, leaving behind a legacy of excellence for the future generations of filmmakers.

Juliette Binoche in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors: Blue

Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue is an endlessly fascinating work of cinema whose brilliance, I daresay, is paralleled only by the best works of Bergman Bunuel , and Tarkovsky . Juliette Binoche (the fact that she chose Three Color: Blue over Jurassic Park speaks volumes about her) is mesmerizingly brilliant in her portrayal of a reclusive widow and is well backed up by the rest of the cast. Zbigniew Preisner’s evocative music immensely adds to the poignancy of the movie. Here, I would like to make a special mention of a beautiful song

about hope, faith, and love

played around the end of the movie that exalts love as the greatest of the three.

Kieslowski, an agnostic, borrowed

the song's lyrics from a

chapter of the Bible, 1 Corinthians Chapter 13, a chapter on love and maturity which also forms the basis of Blue.

Through a Glass Darkly (1961), British director Roland Joffe (screenplay by Robert Bolt) in his Palme d'Or winning film The Mission (1986), or Russian filmmaker These Biblical verses have been used again and again by filmmakers over the years: be it master Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman in, British director Roland Joffe (screenplay by Robert Bolt) in his Palme d'Or winning film, or Russian filmmaker

The Banishment (2007). Andrei Zvyagintsev in

Slawomir Idziak’s

highly detailed cinematography gives a whole new life to the movie and helps bring the characters to life. Kieslowski, through his epic trilogy, succeeds in inventing a whole new language of cinema: one that’s so subtle and yet so evocative, so minimal and yet to powerful, so definitive and yet so difficult to express. And while the casual viewer may remain untouched by its sheer power the keen-eyed viewer is bound to be devastated by the impact it creates on his intellect and psyche. Blue serves as a great overture to what lies in store for the viewers in the trilogy’s relatively more complex installments that follow it: White and Red. Highly recommended!

P.S. Three Colors: White has also been reviewed on this blog.