Blue
- French Films - Polish Films - Krzysztof Kieslowski
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Blue
France - 1993
Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
A Review by Mike Jumic
p_chan42@hotmail.com
It doesn't take very long, as Kieslowski shows us with his cinematic joke Blue,
for the viruses that have infested literature to spread to her sister medium, film.
Schopenhauer, in his essays, noted the pollution of literature by mediocre minds who found
it necessary to send readers on a wild goose chase through long, winding, sentences, which
take up plenty of space but say nothing or, as he put it "try as hard as they can
with their exhausting style to hide the lack of any original thought". And so
Kieslowski has taken the sentences and words that Schopenhauer scowled at and turning them
into pictures and sounds, and managed to fool quite a lot of people into believing that
behind all the smoke and mirrors, colors and sound, there beats some kind of grand
statement, deeper mind, original thought or anything worth an hour and a half of our
time. Nice try Kris, you didn't fool me.
What begins as a promising film, visually impressive from the get go, quickly rots into a
mess. Though Kieslowski shows off very well his massive arsenal of visuals; symbols and
metaphors(enough to put a department store to shame), he just as quickly makes it obvious
that he does not know how to use them. Improperly connected to the films characters,
the objects(including the color that is the films namesake; blue) fail to inherit any kind
of serious meaning, that a lamp is a lamp, and a mouse is a mouse, and I ended up mourning
their relative fates with the same emotion I would give to any ordinary broken lamp or
dead mouse. Heavy, excessive Symbolism such as this is the thickest brush available
for the purpose of getting around the task of making a point, and in this sense serves the
director very well. One weeps for the simple symbolic language that Lubitsch and the early
humanists used to enlighten and entertain, and most importantly attach us to their ideas.
It was two things that Kieslowski's language is not ; readily understandable and very
effective.
In other areas, too , the film shows itself to be just as weak. Kieslowski's
characters and their relationships, though once again filmed very well, are very unclear,
and just as his symbols, fail to capture emotion and succeed only in exhausting my
patience. As much as Kieslowski throws out and reveres the word and concept love, he
quickly reveals that he is afraid to make even the smallest original statement about it,
or even to show that he understands what it is. In piecing together his puzzle, all
that I come up with is my own picture, and I already know what I think on the subject. It
was because of this that I was not whisked away into another man's thoughts, but forced to
retreat into my own(which are nothing new and exciting to me) in order to derive meaning
from this film. Some escape! Fellini took me for a ride through his world, and
I worship him for this, Kieslowski either doesn't have a world, or just didn't want to
show it. And so is his problem; though he certainly has the talent to display his views in
a most impressive manner, he doesn't really have any views to display.
Perhaps the lesson form this film is less film school, more life, pain, suffering, love ,
passion.
Guest Comments
From: "Menkle"
"I found Jumic's review fantastic simply out of one reason: I know that I wouldn't be capable of writing such a review even if I had seen the film (but obviously I haven't). I am Mike's friend but I didn't know he's writing reviews on this website which I found totaly by coincidence. Anyway, well done Mike! and we all miss you very much and hardly wait to see in September"
From: "Bill T."
"Jumic is stellar in his observations"
"One would think that love quite personal, but as Jumic notes, others have guided us
through their unique and often unripened versions of love...so why not Blue?
Precisely Jumic!"
Item#:FRA029-4
Price: $24.95
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AVAILABLE ON DVD
DVD
Item#:
FRA029-4DVD
Price: $29.95
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