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Drft...Wud
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BLUE by Kislowski.
First film of the French trilogy
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COLORS
BLUE,WHITE & RED
of the French tricolor
Symbolizing
Freedom,Equality & Fraternity.
Blue attracts tremendously.It is aloof. It is strange .It is cold .It is severe. It is secluded. It never welcomes you in.But you feel it's magnetic draw sometime inescapable.Perhaps it seems to suggest truth and love, that comes with absolute freedom & clarity.The more you like it ,the more it inflicts melancholy and pain.Something unattainable,nonexistent and thus abstract.
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Kislowsky seems to argue absolute freedom( which signifies BLUE ) is perhaps impossible to achieve in a collective. French govt funds the film .For nationalistic ambitions.They at the same time try to portray individual freedom as its ideal.It is an impossible combination.Kislowski have to work in the same restricting confines as in communist Poland. Thus state irrespective of ideologies always seems to shares common inspirations.
Most of the times as it happens.It's the state that calls the shot.But Kislowsky didn't compromise on individual freedom in BLUE.Methodology he adopts is through abstract visual poetry.He takes it to extreme.In the final scene he brings the apparent contradiction between The individual,The state and The church.
His central character Julliet develops desire for individual freedom.This is after she loses her husband and daughter in a car crash.She disposes off her fortunes, she provides for her husband's concubine ,she forgives the boy who stole from the crash site,she gives up her aging mother ;she gives off her husband's title,she gives her body to the lust of the lover, she even gives up the only passion left ,the script of the master-piece her husband worked on.
But society tries to draw her in ,into it's fold.Make her give up the quest for absolute freedom.In her words she won't cry, she would not play into THE TRAP again.The trap from which she has been accidentally released due to the car crash.
The contradiction begins. The past returns to her again and again.
As an metaphor
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The dead husband
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returns in the form of The original score,The flute,The flute player in the street,The pregnant concubine mothering her husbands baby.
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The lover
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in The color red,in endless chase,The mattress they first made love.
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The child
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in the form of The prostitute ,The suckling mice,The blue chandelier.
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The mother
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in the form of The water pool,The Mother rat,The mother at hospital without a memory,The rope in the TV show of bungee jumping and rope walking,The old women in the street.
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Every thing returns to haunt her again and again. She fights back with intense cold,unemotional,detachment one associate with Blue.Much like the cat she borrows to kill the rat.But in the Penultimate scene she is trapped,forced to surrender.
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THE PENULTIMATE SCENE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmQ88PWzvR0
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Julie has finally cracked the code of final score.It belongs to the Concertino.Which her enigmatic genius husband has left behind.It was the Concertino which would unify Europe. With frantic swishes of her BLUE PEN she writes it down.Freedom !! But it is very transient...
She ring's the assistant of her husband (the lover).Remember the color in front of the assistant's desk ? Bright RED, of Lust,Greed & Pretensions.He refuses to compose the original final score.He does so, in order to have it named as his own Conertino.Just by making little adjustments on the original score.Which he admits would be a bit heavy.And defeats the real motive.
This is Kislowsky's abstract reminder of individual freedom sacrificed to greed at the pretense of society.
She hangs up.She is trapped finally.As her aspiration of individual freedom comes crashing down.She is defeated ,unceremoniously dragged into concocted reality again.With no way out.Remember how she tells her servant that she won't cry because she don't want to fall in the trap.
Gives up ,Rings again returns to the lover leaves behind the BLUE PEN.Goes to the lover(assistant).Makes love and the frame turns red.
Remember how the love making scene was .It was tortured ,awkward with no joy or love or freedom .Restricted and suffocating as her face seemed to be plastered on the glass.It looks more like struggle then lovemaking.With the lover in the background enjoying her surrender.
But!! Was it not a forced surrender on unequal grounds.
In the end the Concertino soars
Surprise !! Surprise !!
It's not her husband's concertino
It's the blunt verses of virtues from Corinthians, chapter 13 OF The Book of Revelation Bible.
Of course how could it be!!!
It has never been sung or made till now ! But its every where .Anyone (I stress ONE) can invent it. This is what the flute player in the street said to Julie.But it's the Corinthians we will hear.Something builds within us.Our ear longs for the Concertino's flute...but still we keep hearing verses from Bible.
LAST scene you see a human's naked back reflected in Julie's cornea.From inside her bed room.While she stares out THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS..into the BLUE.Which seem to caresses her face draw her in . But then there is an intervening windowpane with reflections of other hues also.An incidental tear drop rolls down Julliet's cheek.She is TRAPPED again.
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THE END.
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IT IS EVERY WHERE as KIZLWZ used to say.It needs some one to pick it up.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HMT7MnRcQw
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See where Julie's quest lead.
Summarized in the LAST SCENE
The thief is transformed,
The assistant is successful in having his love,fame and fortune.
The mother gets back traces of memory again from Alzheimers,
The prostitute gets back her childhood,
The concubine cradles the husband's baby in the womb. She is on her way back to womanhood.
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You wonder !!!
As the collective gains,
At the cost of individual consciousness .
Is it Julie a metaphor of Kislowski the individual ????
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Who are unceremoniously made to lose their individual freedom.
In the name of love as per Bible...or in the name of state here FRANCE.
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Mean while the film picks up a crescendo
as the verses from Corinthians ,Chapter-13 soars even higher in the background ......
Verse 13 is sung as the climax reaches its zenith.
Contradictions now appear to this seemingly impregnable idea about greatest human aspiration .LOVE.
It is now .
A MOMENTOUS REVELATION occurs .
About our illusory existence.
Holy logic don't seem to hold that thing .
The thing that had been growing with in us all the while.
Now.
All you want to hear is Julliet's concertino only.
Or
The flute in the street.
But it is never sung and the flute never played again.
Need not be.
Because ....
It is everywhere now
The audience picks it up .
Even though it is physically non existent.
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There's a REALITY SHIFT here
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The unification is thus complete with Concertino of jullie.
And we start finally to experience the surreal called BLUE..
A SINGULAR CONSCIOUSNESS.
It brings the SELF/BIBLE/SOCIETY together in a New Light
The absolute joy of being alive.
Which was unattainable a moment ago .
Just like a bubble that breaks the surface .
Or
Like the sugar cube soaking up the coffee
Drops..plop !
dissolves .
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Jullie's metaphysical music is everywhere.
YOU START TO HEAR VOICES beyond the apparent.....
SEEING THINGS
Looking at unassuming..irrelevant..
meaningless
You find it's there
THE GHOST unreal
you used to call Abstract .....
Do you get it on your face..
The REALITY.
More importantly
Do you now see Who you are.
Oh !if you can see innocuous
surely you can find it out
No big deal now !!
Kislowsky thus brings in NEW LIGHT on The French Govt's petty ambition and The church's preaching.
With his dazzling individuality.
Champions individual freedom.
The SELF/BLUE which don't recognise state,time or form.....
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BLUE IS EVERY WHERE YOU NEED TO PICK IT UP.
EVEN IN A SUGAR LUMP.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HMT7MnRcQw
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A NON TRAGEDY
Did he make film after color ??
NO HE DIDN'T ..
WHY THE FCUK SHULD HE.
He died in 1996 a MASTER.
Thank You !! MASTER KIZLWZ.
FOR GIVING ME THE EYES.
It has been a joy writing his Obituary .
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References:
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http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com/2008/09/visual-storytelling-kieslowskis-blue.html
