Red (Three Colors Trilogy)

Rating:
Summary: A portrait in scarlet
Review: Despite being the finale of the critically acclaimed "Colors" trilogy, "Red" ("Rouge") need not be seen after the similarly beloved "Blue" ("Bleu") and "White" ("Blanc"). As warm and rich as the shades of red scattered through it, this film is one of the most compelling non-American releases in years.

On her way home from a modelling session, Valentine (Irene Jacob) accidently runs over and injures a pregnant dog. The owner is Joseph Kern, (Jean-Louis Trintignant) an embittered, cynical ex-judge whose years of condemnation and acquittal have left him spiritually adrift. He now spends his time alone in his house, wiretapping the phones of his neighbors and predicting what will happen in their lives.

After Valentine expresses disgust at Joseph's activities, he turns himself in to the authorities. Their friendship grows into a bond of differing values and unhappy histories. As Valentine prepares to leave for England, the judge reveals the tragic circumstances of his early life -- a tragedy mirrored by some of the people he has been spying on.

Where "Blue" was cool and sensual and "White" was sharp and sexy, "Red" has a sweetness and richness to its story. Valentine's name suggests love, and that love -- a platonic friendship that teeters on romantic love -- brings Joseph back from his unhealthy cynicism. Her kindness and unhappiness appeal to him, reassuring him that people are not intrinsically bad. His spiritual transformation is subtle, but convincing; it's mirrored by the sun shining down on him near the film's end.

Few filmmakers could pull off the symbolism that springs up in any of the "Colors" movies. In this one, red springs up everywhere -- walls, glasses, jeeps, lipstick, clothing, phones, bowling balls, little lights lining a model runway. The most obvious example is the enormous red picture of Valentine that's put up over the city.

The writing is simple but profound, with immense weight on simple statements like "Why don't you do anything?" or "You deserve to die!" Perhaps the only questionable part of the movie is the way it draws together characters from "White" and "Blue." It's either strained or genius -- hard to tell which.

Jacob does an excellent job with the difficult character of Valentine. She's almost too nice and innocent to be real, the incarnation of all that is good, but Jacob makes her come to life; without a word, she can convey a wealth of emotion with her face. Trintignant has a harder job: he has to bring across the weary, existentialist judge without making him unsympathetic. And he does so astoundingly.

In the French flag, red stands for fraternity. Not necessarily in the sense of brothers or college pals, but rather a love for one's fellow man. And that sense of fraternity is what drives "Red."

Rating:
Summary: Love is blind, good film making is Red.
Review: Every great director creates a sort of myth around his or her work. For Kieslowski, his ultimate denouement finds its place in Red. Red is the third and final film in Kieslowski's Trois Colours Trilogy and, in fact, the last film of his career. It takes place in Geneva, a city renowned for its neutrality and aloofness in an already very aloof and very neutral country. High in the Swiss Alps, the story concerns a young model and part time student, Valentine, and a regretful and reclusive old judge, whose name is kept a mystery. Like in Bleu, the first film in the series, the primary story begins with a car accident, as Valentine runs over the Judge's dog. When the Judge refuses to accept the wounded animal, Valentine is forced to take the dog to the veterinarian. When attempting to return the dog once again after her treatment, she discovers that the Judge is spying on his neighbors with his radio equipment. Valentine cannot bring herself to denounce the Judge, although she finds his actions utterly reprehensible and a bit pathetic, and even takes part in the Judge's world of detached moral condemnation by calling a man whom the Judge suspects is a drug dealer (her brother being a drug addict) to curse at him. From that point, the Judge and Valentine engage in what at first is an ambivalent relationship, but which slowly and intimately melts into an exchange of fraternity. The relationship grows closer as both make sacrifices for each other and emotional revelations between each other, dredging up painful memories, revealing long held secrets, mistakes, and vanities, and admitting misplaced or unrequited love. The film ends in a tour de force, as there is a fulfillment of Kieslowski's promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Rating:
Summary: please go back in print
Review: I have seen the trilogy, own Blue and White, and now Red is out of print. I hope upon hope as DVD takes off, it will go back in print in Digital form. Of course I will have to buy a DVD player.

Rating:
Summary: Superb Cinema
Review: I just finished the third film in the Krzysztof Kieslowski Trois Couleurs series, Rouge (Red). Blue was excellent, White was wonderful, but Red, Red is my favorite. Such an amazing sense of emotion and feeling, perfectly enhanced by the visual and chromatic symbolism throughout the film. The interweaving of the plotline as the film winds to it?s completion was superb, and incredibly complex. I believe you could watch the series out of order, but would miss out on the recapitulation of the series characters that occurs in the final film. Highly recommended, especially as the warmth and sense of optimism Kieslowski leaves you with, even in the face of tragedy, is quite powerful.

Rating:
Summary: Adorable, fascinating, what else can I say?
Review: I just had the opportunity to watch the three components of this magnificent trilogy that wrapped up the creative life of Polish-born director Krzysztof Kieslowski, and while I still think that watching the three in order (in the same order as they were released, after the French flag: "Blue," "White" and "Red") I found "Red" to be beyond just the culmination of the series. Irène Jacob (Valentine), who had previously worked with Kieslowski in his 1991 feature "The Double Life of Veronique" delivers a fascinating performance by staying right on the verge of falling for the retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) whom she manages to subtly redeem, but never letting herself go... Her fate is almost written by the judge, a character that gradually becomes omniscient and "all powerful," ultimately driving Valentine toward her destiny, one which somehow does not differ much from ending in love with him... (intriguing huh?)

A story of love (thus the color red), somehow; a story of redemption in a way as well, although the movie can stand by itself it curiously goes beyond itself if you have had a chance to watch all three. As an example of this, note the old hunchback lady struggling to push an empty bottle into the recycling bin, and the reactions of the main characters in the three movies. In "Blue," Julie shows total indifference, eyes closed, denoting "freedom," liberty from the world, from life, "independence." In "White," Karol contemplates the lady struggling but does little to help her, after all (he might have thought to himself,) "my life is every bit as miserable or even worse -let her deal with her own misery." A sign of "equality" it could be said, though clearly misunderstood, every bit as much as Jelie's "liberty." Finally, in "Red" Valentine helps the lady with the bottle (a sign of charity, love or "fraternity," if you may). A very clear connection between the movies' titles and the ideals that each of them conveys in the French national flag, way beyond the illumination that also characterizes each of the movies.

The movie brilliantly ends in a tone that makes it clear to the viewer that the main characters of the three-part series accomplished closure, redemption in their lives, by ending up next to their truly loved ones. All in all, a masterpiece, worth watching several times.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite movie ever
Review: I've viewed literally thousands of movies over my long life. This is my absolute favorite. Irene Jacob is magnificent, the most beautiful woman ever on screen. The story, direction, music, photography-- all are superb. This movie is available on DVD to Spanish-speaking fans. I pray it comes out on DVD in the original French with English subtitles.

Rating:
Summary: Kieslowski's Die Hard trilogy
Review: If you're looking at this film, you won't be expecting car chases and machine guns ... These three films, of which Red is the last, and perhaps - to my mind - the least satisfying (although, if you have seen the first two films you will love the deliberately artificial 'tying up of loose ends') form a close-knit trilogy and together offer a perfect example of what European film makers do so well and Hollywood does so badly, spellbindingly slow studies of character and situation that draw you in, that you need to relax into like a hot bath. I shan't go into the symbolism of the three films - the themes of colour and "freedom, equality and fraternity" - as that is dissected far better in the other reviews. I will say, however, that you don't need to know any of that and can enjoy these films as simply great beautiful works of art.

If you agree that films can be an artform and not pure entertainment, you don't faint at the thought of subtitles and you don't need an explosion every five minutes to keep you concentrating, give these a try.

Rating:
Summary: God takes early retirement
Review: In Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1994 Red, we might think that God has taken early retirement. A retired Geneva judge conducts telephone surveillance of his neighbors in a kind of weary Calvinist curiosity about life. This is hardly the God of Abraham, a whirlwind speaking to Job, but a postmodernist cripple discarded by his times. When Valentine finds her way to his door after hitting his German shepherd with her car, he makes no effort to conceal his wiretapping hobby, and virtually encourages her to go next door and inform those on whom he's eavesdropping. She does so, but once she's invited in and begins to size up the family who live there, she realizes she's no longer sure what the right thing to do is. The judge's existential view that we're defined more by our actions than by our ideas may have started her thinking but is directed much more at the audience.
The judge is a kind of twentieth century Prospero, damaged, skeptical, and disillusioned with life and the ability to make judgments. As fascinated as Kieslowski is by the judge, and by chance and human fate, however, I think he has more sympathy with Valentine and her youthful optimism. When the howling storm blows open the doors of a building, she closes them. When neighbors throw stones through the judge's window, she sweeps up the broken glass. When she runs over the judge's dog, she picks her up, finds the owner, then transports her to the vet. She too wonders about destiny but never gives up believing in free will, responsibility and the need for judgment.
In contrast to the depressed Auguste who ties up and abandons his dog, when Valentine takes Rita out, she let's her run free. Yet the audience is likely to focus more on what looks like the hand of fate, as that freedom leads her back to the judge.
The phone call that opens the film shoots its way long distance through cables that travel underwater only to get a busy signal.
When Auguste takes his dog for a walk, it starts to veer into the street and he pulls the leash back, saving it from possibly being hit by a car. Kieslowski is showing us that to say that Valentine's running over Rita is fate is too simple. People can be careful or careless. And people have a choice; they can run from responsibility or take the dog to its owner, take it on to the vet, or leave it with the owner.
Why, of all movies, did Valentine's boyfriend recommend Dead Poet's Society?
When Valentine hits the jackpot on the slot machine, she comments, "I think I know why I won," as if she feels that life, fate, rewards or punishes us.
If Joseph Kern is a postmodernist God, it's interesting that his dog leads her into, and out of, a church.
Kern tells Valentine, somewhat mysteriously, that it was easy to find her address. Easy for him maybe, with his power to look into human lives.
Kern says the conversations on which he eavesdrops are "entertaining." This is a voice of self-irony, God as couch potato, and self-disgusted.
"Why don't you do anything?" Kern asks Valentine, as she expresses her repugnance for what she sees him doing. It's an existential question, a philosophical challenge. He wants to know, to understand, the springs of behavior, the nature of human nature, the ambiguity of good and evil, the purpose of life.
The face of the man under the money who later appears on the cover of the CD Valentine likes-but can't buy because the last one has been sold-who is he? Looks like an 18th century print. The name given by the store clerk, according to one review I read, is a pseudonym for the movie's composer, Zbigniew Preisner. I searched for photos of John Calvin, the Geneva theologian of predestination, and not much resemblance and a different style of dress.
"Were you a policeman?" Valentine asks Kern. "Worse," he responds, "a judge." Like most intellectuals of relativism and the postmodernist age, he's no longer sure he knows good from evil. Making judgments is suspect. But Valentine does not hesitate to "judge" the (alleged) drug-dealing neighbor: "You deserve to die," she pronounces.
Kern says it doesn't matter whether Valentine reveals the truth to the neighbors. Intervention will mean little, he says. Either way, sooner or later, it will come out the same way. He's resigned to fate, and he's oppressed, worn-out by his fatalism and resignation.
Later, he tells her to leave, go to England. "It's your destiny," he says. Don't try to help your brother, he says. All you can do is "be."
Moviegoers and critics seem to eat up this idea of fate. It's very sexy, intriguing, dramatic, good movie material. A banner ad on the NYTimes webpage for the new movie Happenstance shows a woman, who looks not unlike Irene Jacob, and the words "Chance, Destiny, Liaison." Kieslowski has put it out there, but I think he also takes some of it back-maybe life is not all fate.
As Valentine drives her car down the hill from the judge's house, the camera shows the view ahead and the view in her rear-view mirror.
The broken glass at the bowling alley is certainly intriguing, but hasn't something been left out? Broken in anger? Even before Auguste eavesdrops at Karin's window? How/why did he become so suspicious? All we're shown are a couple of unanswered phone calls Auguste makes. Auguste shouldn't be paranoid like Valentine's awful boyfriend.
The ad agency/chewing gum company chooses the photo of Valentine looking sad, not chewing gum. What is this telling us? The consumption society casts itself as the solution to the problem of human sadness. But the gum in the lock, vandalism by "Turks," is a tough symbol.
I did not understand why Kieslowski chooses to spend as much film as he does showing Kern get in his car, close his garage doors, drive to the fashion house and park, especially when there otherwise doesn't seem to be a single foot of film that doesn't fit into the whole and resonate.
I don't know if I grasped the point of the janitor who helps carry the cleaning woman's heavy buckets either, but at least it feels interesting. There is at least some fraternity in life, notwithstanding human nature.
The camera gives us a long, slow, stationary shot of a slab of iron when the ferry ramp is drawn up. There's a narrow slit through which we can see the ferry moving off. This thin crack seems to symbolize our narrow view of life, how, like Auguste and Valentine, again and again just missing each other, we go about our lives as if wearing blinders, seeing only a narrow slice of the world in front of us and missing what's going on right beside us.
Kieslowski left Karol and Dominique in a kind of perpetual hell of revenge in White, so perhaps there's optimism in their reunion at the end of Red.

Rating:
Summary: ¿Do symbols plus pretty pictures equal art?¿
Review: In the third and final film of his celebrated TROIS COULEURS trilogy, Krzysztof Kieslowski attempts to show how all persons, whether they know it or not, are mysteriously connected by some acausal connecting principle of "fraternité." Just as THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE had dealt with the parallel lives of two identical women on either side of the Iron Curtain, RED deals with the parallel lives of an old man and a young man. An elderly retired judge, Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant), spends his days spying and eavesdropping on his neighbors with an arsenal of surveillance equipment. His malaise and dissatisfaction with life is the result of a divided spirit that is, either in whole or in part, restored by his Platonic relationship with a young French fashion model who has come to work in Geneva, Valentine (Irène Jacob). The film's general themes seem somewhat analogous to those in Bernardo Bertolucci and Alberto Moravia's THE CONFORMIST, which also starred Trintignant. Like Bertolucci, Kieslowski uses chronological dislocations of life experience to mirror the central character's dislocation of identity, offering them as pieces in the psychological jigsaw puzzle of how a man comes to be what he is.

Kern's inability to reconcile with his past and get on with his present life may be a metaphor for the inability of Europe as a whole to deal with its history since World War II and confront its current situation. His need for distractions and deliberate sublimation of personal guilt and disappointment in an obsessive voyeuristic interest with the lives of those around him may also be a reflection of how modern communications technology has altered human behavior and ways in which people perceive themselves and the world around him. On a broader scale, it may serve to demonstrate how people's lives are colonized by people they have never met through the omnipresence and pervasiveness of mass media. And so, Marshall McLuhan's "global village" has resulted in a concomitant alienation of the individual from his fellows and of the individual from his sense of sovereign identity.

The catalyst in Kern's life is, of course, Valentine. Like Goethe's Faust, Kern ultimately abandons the pursuit of forbidden knowledge for the redeeming love of a woman. Her name, Valentine, connotes love and human companionship and, throughout the course of the film, that is what she offers him. Indeed, her life is perhaps even more of a mystery than Kern's, perhaps because she is still young and has not acquired enough of a personal history yet. All we learn is that her brother is a heroin addict and that she desperately wants to please her boyfriend, who is currently living abroad and can only be contacted by telephone. (Her frantic efforts to beat the answering machine are a bit reminiscent of Carmen Maura's behavior in Almodóvar's WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN, which was itself a takeoff on Jean Cocteau's play, THE HUMAN VOICE). Valentine's problem is that she does not have an autonomous identity of her own. As a fashion and advertising model, she is required to project to others an image of their own narcissism.

Valentine's growing self-awareness is measured in the images she constantly sees of herself like the fashion-layout photographs and the billboard. However, these are not "true" images of herself, insofar as they have been determined by the will of others. Her increased fascination with her own face, as reflected in car windows, signalizes an internal change. By the final shot in the film, the artfully constructed mirror image of herself in the billboard-an encounter with her conscious self and her mass-media doppelgänger-becomes transformed into an actual image of herself as she "really" is in a real-life situation. She has evolved from her former passive status as an opaque photographic object to a new serene kind of feminine subjectivity and solipsism.

In the context of a written review, this may sound all well and good but Kieslowski's film is not entirely convincing in itself. Indeed, RED and the whole TROIS COULEURS trilogy qualifies as one of the most curiously overrated film experiments to come out of Europe in recent memory (but then again, look at the ecstatic reception some of those mediocre-to-gawdawful Dogme 95 films are getting these days!). Kieslowski's emphasis on man's spiritual life is intriguing in a Felliniesque sort of way, but the overreliance on "fate" and "chance" as the determining factor in the characters' lives-the mysterious, quasi-Jungian force that ultimately brings everyone together-seems merely a vague and facile device with no higher purpose but to justify a lot of arbitrary coincidences. (SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION told us just as much while cleverly delineating a serious social problem at the same time).

In RED, the accumulation of "significant" little plot points feels too obvious and opportunistic. All of it just doesn't sit right and one gets the impression that Kieslowski is cheating with the story-that he is groping for some kind of fuzzyheaded New Age revelation that isn't quite there. It's a seductive con at first but the dialogue, particularly Trintignant's, is overloaded with heavy, cryptic, pseudo-profound banalities ("Perhaps you were the woman I never met") that come across as little more than half-hearted, nondescript attempts at some great gnomic wisdom. And while Kieslowski is no doubt a master visual stylist, I still feel somewhat suspicious of his all-too-repetitive use of filtered light to create an automatic atmosphere of supposed inner awareness and expectancy. His images aren't really any more interesting or meaningful than the fashion layouts and chewing gum advertisements he seems to be obliquely criticizing. As Pauline Kael once asked, "do symbols plus pretty pictures equal art?"

Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable!
Review: Irene Jacob is spellbinding as a Geneva fashion model who meets a bitter and lonely judge played by the great Jean-Louis Trintignant. Jocob, also lonely, finds herself drawn to the judge, who spends his days listening to his neighbors' phone calls with elaborate surveillance equipment. The film is full of chance meetings, parallels and beautiful moments. Jacob's face on the giant billboard in downtown Geneva is hauntingly recaptured in the film's final moment. This single image moves me to tears everytime I watch it. To say it is a masterpiece is to not even begin to describe the intensity and brilliance of Kieslowski's last film.