THREE COLORS: RED
Evening Redness in the West
A film review by K. Leung
Copyright 1995 K. Leung
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Perhaps the opening sequence could have been more subtle. That is the only criticism I have of Kieslowski's last film, a glorious celebration of the art of cinema and the vagaries of life, and a tantalizing meditation on intersection between the two. Elegiac, self-referential, and full of world-weary wisdom and irony, RED is widely considered an update of THE TEMPEST, with Kieslowski as stage-manager/magician conjuring up sea-wraths, weaving intricate webs of fate that link unsuspecting strangers and reconcile present to past. But the director, ever respectful of human freedom, would be loathe to stuff alien words into his characters' mouths; instead, the magic is mostly in the shades of light, the camera angles, the oblique story-telling--the stuff of pure cinema. Irene Jacob's character (Valentine) comes upon dark suspicions, and shadows obscure her face; Jean-Louis Trintigant's retired judge sets to unveal his secrets, and the afternoon sun breaks through into his mauloseum-mansion. Thunderbolts interrupt the "conversation in the theater," thus evoking the Judge's tumultuous past and prefiguring an impending catastrophy in one stroke, illuminating one brief moment in time against all eternity. The all-reflecting panes of glass that frame the characters' isolation have never been more pristine, more revealing; every coincidence, every glance out the window is a destiny missed, and every turn into a side street is an adventure bursting with significance--as if revelation is just around the corner. Kieslowski does not invent the conventions; the originality in RED lies in the exceptional power of the symbols and imagery, and the propriety with which they fit into the narrative, anticipating/recalling each other, until they seem to sustain and animate the film all by themselves. Indeed the color red, in the guise of a Landrover, is used prominently as the vector of narrative. Nominally about "fratenity," in the master's hand it also becomes the color of betrayal, of breathless expectations, a warning; very early in the film (following the first fashion show), the oppressive array of red objects and road-map of cautionary signs and flashing lights (paced by Zbigniew Preisner's breath-taking score) combine to establish a mood almost oracular in intensity that will never go away. The crafty director is not above throwing in red herrings either: the red jacket is on the *other* fashion model as the surprised camera pulls away; it tracks down Valentine as she glides down the runway and then--with characteristic Kieslowskian modesty--almost trips and falls on her high spiked heels. In fact the entire film has this disposition of a precisely choreographed fashion show graced with humanizing glitches; it is a cosmic fairy tale told with the power and certainty (as Dave Kehr suggested in "Film Comment") of planetary alignment, yet it is also one that finally repudiates design in favor of freedom and the chaos of life. Kieslowski has set out to create a masterpiece, and who can deny he has created the cinematic landmark of the 1990's. All in all, it seems like an appropriate note on which to end his brilliant career.
It is springtime in Geneva, but Joseph Kern's garden is full of fallen leaves. Tormented by guilt and sunk in irony and indifference, he is really more Camus' judge-penitent than Kafka's Joseph K. Trintigant gives a supremely controlled portrait of this black-hole of accumulated cynicism, a deeply withdrawn man incapable of giving anything away; only his still clear eyes reveal the madness that must have burnt away so much of his life. Having given up his worldly titles, the Judge holds the world in contempt and spends his days eavesdropping on his neighbors' phone-calls. He is an impressive wizard of technology, and his command of weather conditions, planetary motion, and daylight also seems downright supernatural; but mostly he is a haggard, bitter old man whose lightbulbs are running out. Valentine is his opposite: she is open and radiant, the poster-girl of red-blooded youthfulness that gives so much life and inspiration to the film. She meets Kern through an accident, when she runs over his German shepherd while she is distracted by interference on her car radio. Initially Kern sends woman and dog away, prompting her to call on him to "stop breathing." Later he sets her up to "discover" his voyeurism; the display of self-flagellation is evidently meant as revenge for his loss of idealism, to be wrecked upon the guileless of the world. His scheming fails, for Jacob/Valentine's face is finally too sympathetic, and her compassion for him is too genuine. The subtle, poignant, and finely-nuanced portrayal of their emerging friendship is reminiscent of the story-telling technique of the best parts of BLUE. Valentines tells Kern about her troubled brother, her fears and admonitions; he gradually reveals his tribulations and guilt, and tells her the story of his unfaithful lover who died in a car-wreck. He says he dreams of her (Valentine), and sets out to free her from the cold comfort of her displaced, destructive love affair. Round the corner from her apartment lives the earnest Auguste, a sort of young, unspoiled "double" for Kern, whom Kern learns about while spying on phone calls. Not only is Auguste also involved in a ruinous relationship, but it is clear that he shares Kern's dubious taste for self-pity and futility. (Kieslowski's concise characterization of Auguste--using just scraps of dialog and a few short scenes--has the clarity of self-knowledge.) Only the fairy-tale maiden Valentine can save him from a fate like Kern's, but they stubbornly keep missing each other in the streets, as though they were ciphers in an Altman tale. It is finally up to the Judge to take drastic measures, to give them a much needed hand on their way to their manifest destiny.
RED is a fable about the mysterious, intangible links between human beings, and as in THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE, these connections are for the most part one-sided or blocked, if not missed completely until too late. There are the missed opportunities between Valentine and Auguste, always a few heartbeats apart, and the miscommunications between them and their respective ex-lovers. Among the incidental figures, Valentine's estranged brother Mark is always preying on her mind. Through the intercepted phone calls, we also learn about the chasm between the closet-homosexual and his wife, as well as the pathetic story of the attention-pandering elderly mother; these little everyday tragedies seem to be growing in the air, flourishing behind every closed door. Kern, acknowledging his limited powers, tells Valentine she can't live for others, but must just "be" (herself); meanwhile he is secretly cultivating a redeeming love in the ruins with the last summons of his powers. It is amusing that Kieslowski chooses the telephone as metaphor for both isolation and connectedness, considering the days of wire-taps and crossed-up telephone lines he must have endured in old communist Poland, where phone calls were anything but private and insular. Valentine, the crown jewel of a Western culture that values individual freedom above all else, pleads that "everyone deserves their privacy"; but when she calls at the gay husband's home to blow the Judge's cover, she is shocked to find the man's young daughter eavesdropping on the phone too, and seems none the worse for having learned the terrible secret. Perhaps people are more complex and resilient, more understanding of others' weaknesses, than the romantics and cynics would like to believe after all. RED, the most flamboyant and visually beautiful work among Kieslowski's films, also has the most voyeurism, the most decrepit old women running around with recycled bottles, as well as numerous other obscenities. Death, the greatest obscenity of them all, is present in particular abundance. It is as if beauty and its antithesis must exist side by side, if not exactly in harmony, then at least with respectful wariness, and a peculiar kind of grace. During the second fashion show, Valentine receives Kieslowski's coronation of light and is showered with every tricks of flattery the camera can muster, and yet she is completely distracted, scarcely thinking of herself at all, but is looking all over for the disreputable dirty old man she has invited to the show. It is a remarkable scene, one that rivals in conception and care the miraculous spinning shot from inside the tourist bus in THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE. It makes one wonder what divine grace has given the young Jacob the centerpiece to two such memorable scenes in a row.
The conclusion to RED is more daring than the ending in BLUE, more revelatory than that of WHITE, and far more subtle and mysterious than both of them combined. Valentine, Auguste, as well as Julie and her assistant in BLUE and Dominique and Karol of WHITE are all assembled on board the same ferry. The thunderstorm, gathering force all this time on (Auguste's unfaithful lover) Karin's computer screen, unleashes its fury, killing all one thousand people aboard--only the principle characters of the trilogy and an unknown English barman survive. Also perishing in the tragedy are Karin and her new beau yachting nearby, but Kieslowski would only let us sympathize with Auguste's drowned pet dog. The Judge impassively follows the rescue on television; just moments earlier he has been cradling his shepherd's new born puppies. Safely landed, Auguste at last meets Valentine, whom he already knows from her larger-than-life poster hoisted over Geneva. The likeness of that poster--Valentine's mystery-haunted profile caught in a blaze of red--momentarily regenerates before him in freeze-frame. The Judge looks out the window, a shade more weary now, having passed one more sentence too many; he allows himself a hint of softness in the eyes, betraying the fondness expressed in his farewell and his gift of life. He will not see her again. With that, Kieslowski's long procession of magicians and demigods--the camera buff transforming people and objects into celluloid, the puppeteer Alexander honing his telepathy--have worked their capricious deeds for the last time. It is probably moot to ask whether the Judge has condemned the many or spared the few. Some die, others live on, and life regenerates itself--these are the rules that the director's characters have always lived by. On these very terms, the dead Weronica sends warning to Veronique, her double, and Ulla (NO END) is saved by her husband's ghost; Julie consents to destroying the baby mice in her apartment in BLUE, and in return grants legitimacy to the unborn child of her late husband's mistress. Ignored by them all, the decrepit old woman follows her relentless recycling to all corners of the world. Kieslowski's mythicism, dismissed as "new age" by some frivolous critics, is ultimately as old as the Book of Ecclesiastes, just as the conclusion to the trilogy is as harsh and arbitary as the story of Eve. Still, it is a tremendously moving and fitting ending, the likes of which I doubt I'll ever see again. Like BLUE and WHITE before it, RED brilliantly subverts the ideal that the color represents, turning the abstraction of universal comradeship into the mutual congratulations of the lucky surviving few. But if life in our times is truly the uninterrupted aftermath of car accidents and shipwrecks that Kieslowski's vision seems to suggest, then I suppose we can all be doing a lot worse.
K.L., December 1994.
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