Krzysztof Kieslowski

[Dan Warburton]

So I returned to the Trilogy last night, watching Blanc for the first time. While I find much to admire in the cinematography, and enjoyed Zbigniew Zamachowski's performance as Karol (was underwhelmed by Julie Delpy though), I'm still left wondering what it was all in aid of. HERE BE SPOILERS How literally am I supposed to take this? Why would she have married him in the first place, given the language barrier, and clear lack of love (on her part - or is that just Delpy's rather dull performance?)? This strange mix of the plausible and the implausible (with more of the latter than the former) seems to tap into a strain of - well, don't know if surrealism is the right word for it, but let's call it that - in Polish literature (Pawel Huelle, Slawomir Mrozek.. not just Polish either, I guess you could also include some Milan Kundera in there), which seems to work better for me on paper than it does in film.
Found the ending particularly disappointing - and wasn't surprised to learn that it was something of an afterthought for Kieslowski too. He was clearly working under enormous pressure, doing all three films of the Trilogy in just nine months, and fuelling himself with ridiculous amounts of caffeine and nicotine along the way. I think I'd have preferred it to end after Dominique's arrest the morning after Karol's fake funeral, but there you go.
Hope to get to Rouge before too long.

[grisha]

yeah, i think Blanc is the weakest of the three (some very strong parts, though), but Rouge is easily my favourite.

[Dan Warburton]

yeah, i think Blanc is the weakest of the three (some very strong parts, though), but Rouge is easily my favourite.

Actually, for all its dodgy bits, I enjoyed it more than Bleu.. but I suspect the music has a lot to do with my reaction.

[surfer]

My favorite scene from White, and one of my favorite scenes ever:

I love 9:00 in to this clip, Karol has airmailed himself in his own luggage, been beaten and bloodied by thugs, deposited on a landfill, and his first words are "Home at last!", as he reaches for his stolen bust, and the first dramatic piano notes from Preisner's tango sound.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxSiGzL6w7I

[Dan Warburton]

Next time I go by Place de Clichy, I must check if there is indeed an apartment just above the Brasserie Wepler (if ever you're in town, surfin' buddy, we can do dinner there - awesome bouillabaisse.. went there the day after my wedding).
Ah, at times it's nice to live in Paris!
(Place de Clichy also features, you will recall, in Bande à Part, which we talked about here last week, with Godard and Truffaut both rather liking the boutique called Nouvelle Vague. One wonders whether KK's inclusion of the poster from Le Mépris isn't a homage of sorts to that..)

[surfer]

Love to Dan, j'adore bouillabaisse. Havent been back to Paris since I was an exchange student there in 89 while I was in HS.

To answer your question about how literally you should take this, that depends I suppose on whether you think its possible to pack yourself into luggage and check it on an airplane, and survive a flight from Paris to Waraw. You could call it hyper-reality, I guess. And I dont think Delphy is dull, I think she's just cold (emotionally, not physically).

[surfer]

White is about equality understood as a contradiction. We
understand the concept of 'equality', that we all want to be equal.
But I think this is absolutely not true. I don't think anybody really
wants to be equal. Everybody wants to be more equal. There's a
saying in Polish: There are those who are equal and those who are
more equal. That's what used to be said during Communism and I
think it's still being said.
This is what the film's about. At the beginning, Karol is humiliated,
trampled into the ground. He wants to get out of this
situation, both literally and metaphorically. Of course, to a certain
extent he's to blame, but that's the way things stand. He isn't
having any success sleeping with his wife. Nobody knows why he's
suddenly impotent. Once he could and now suddenly he just can't
get it up. He says that maybe it's his work, wine at lunch or
whatever, but we don't really know. And because he can't get it up
he is extremely humiliated both as a man and as a human being.
Everything he ever had is taken away from him and his love is
rejected. Consequently, he wants to show that not just is he not as
low as he's fallen, not just is he on a level with everybody else, but
that he's higher, that he's better.
So he does everything he can to prove to himself and to the
woman who, to put it mildly, has spurned him, that he's better
than she thinks. And he does. Therefore he becomes more equal.
Except that, while becoming more equal, he falls into the trap
which he's set his wife because it turns out that he loves her -
something he didn't know. He thought he no longer loved her. His
aim was to get even with her. Whereas with this revenge it suddenly
appears that love has returned. Both to him and to her.

Kieslowski on Kieslowski, pg 217

[adjustment]

Man, was just in Paris for a day and was at Book-Off at they had a 2€ copy of Kieslowski on Kieslowski and I didn't pick it up. Now I am kicking myself.

Trois Couleurs actually turned me off to Kieslowski years ago but I recently saw Camera Buff (Amator?) and it made me want to try again. That is really a beautiful film. The innocence is so charming. I would really recommend it.

[prms]

also very much enjoyed his documentaries, from talking heads/gadajace glowy we actually took some quotes as an inspiration for a performance project we did with a dancer (macro-structure, micro-improv), sry bout plug .

the collage of people explaining their goals/desires/self-perceptions, some people full of willpower with an unstoppable will to life inertia, others completely lost (the guy at 3:29 comes to mind, sticking out of the collective carelessness). some really brutally honest moments in there.

also on youtube it seems:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vCvXWg_E1k

[kandu]

I'm watching Dekalog now and i'm really excited about it, for no apparent reason.
And I want to know, is there any work that could be tagged as his best, or I should go through all of them?

[surfer]

is there any work that could be tagged as his best, or I should go through all of them?

Not by consensus, no. Just reading over this thread, its pretty clear different people like different periods, which can pretty easily be grouped by:

The Early Documentaries (mostly the 70s):

The Office (Urząd 1966)
Tramway (Tramwaj 1966)
Concert of Requests (Koncert życzeń 1967)
The Photograph (Zdjęcie 1968)
From the City of Łódź (Z miasta Łodzi 1968)
I Was a Soldier (Byłem żołnierzem 1970)
Factory (Fabryka 1970)
Workers '71: Nothing About Us Without Us (Robotnicy '71: Nic o nas bez nas 1971)
Before the Rally (Przed rajdem 1971)
Between Wrocław and Zielona Góra (Między Wrocławiem a Zieloną Górą 1972)
The Principles of Safety and Hygiene in a Copper Mine (Podstawy BHP w kopalni miedzi 1972)
Gospodarze (1972)
Refrain (Refren 1972)
The Bricklayer (Murarz 1973)
First Love (Pierwsza miłość 1974)
X-Ray (Przeswietlenie 1974)
Pedestrian Subway (Przejście podziemne 1974)
Curriculum Vitae (Życiorys 1975)
Hospital (Szpital 1976)
Slate (Klaps 1976)
From a Night Porter's Point of View (Z punktu widzenia nocnego portiera 1977)
I Don't Know (Nie wiem 1977)
Seven Women of Different Ages (Siedem kobiet w roznym wieku 1978)
Railway Station (Dworzec 1980)
Talking Heads (Gadające glowy 1980)

The Polish Features (mostly the 80s)

The Scar (Blizna 1976)
Camera Buff (Amator 1979)
Short Working Day (Krótki dzień pracy 1981)
Blind Chance (Przypadek 1981)
No End (Bez końca 1984)
The Decalogue (Dekalog 1988)

The French Features (mostly the 90s)

The Double Life of Véronique (La Double vie de Véronique/Podwójne życie Weroniki 1991)
Three Colors: Blue (Trois couleurs: Bleu 1993)
Three Colors: White (Trois couleurs: Blanc/Trzy kolory: Biały 1994)
Three Colors: Red (Trois couleurs: Rouge 1994)

I havent seen any of the early documentaries, they're not available through netflix in a group, you have to DL them or watch them on youtube, which I should do at some point. eraritjaritjaka has mentioned a few of his favorites. Amongst the 80s work, I like all of it (Dekalog the best), with No End being the exception, kind of a heavy-handed poltical tale that didnt get off the ground for me. I can whole-heartedly recommend Blind Chance and Camara Buff. I havent seen The Scar.

As far as the 90s movies, some people dont like them for reasons I wont get into, and some people (including me) think they are the culmination of a life's work and thought. If you have an interest in KK, you'll have to watch them eventually. Generally speaking, his output is so small that figuring out what you're going to watch isnt really a concern, you could easily watch everything in a day or two. The short docs are apparently pretty short, iirc.


great quote from wiki:

Stanley Kubrick wrote the foreword to Kieślowski & Piesiewicz, Decalogue: The Ten Commandments, London: Faber & Faber, 1991:

“ I am always reluctant to single out some particular feature of the work of a major filmmaker because it tends inevitably to simplify and reduce the work. But in this book of screenplays by Krzysztof Kieślowski and his co-author, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, it should not be out of place to observe that they have the very rare ability to dramatize their ideas rather than just talking about them. By making their points through the dramatic action of the story they gain the added power of allowing the audience to discover what's really going on rather than being told. They do this with such dazzling skill, you never see the ideas coming and don't realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart.

Stanley Kubrick January 1991

[kandu]

Thank you very much, surfer. After finishing Dekalog i'll go through his early works and appreciate them.

[Dan Warburton]

Saw Rouge, for the first time, last night. Definitely my favourite of the three, and a technically astounding piece of work in terms of camera movement, lighting, sound (even the music's OK here) and acting - both Trintignant and Jacob are really superb - BUT..
(HERE BE SPOILERS) When it was over, I was left with the same nagging doubts that I had with Bleu. Like, what's the big message here? And how does the film's sheer technical brilliance help to get it across? Firstly, the ferry disaster ending (all seven - number symbolism a bit obvious, non? - survivors included the characters from Bleu and Blanc) was awfully trite, though not as annoying as the multiple character flashback at the end of Bleu. Why on earth would Irene Jacob travel half a thousand miles in midwinter and freeze her rocks off on a cross channel ferry to go visit such an obnoxious jealous little tw*t like Michel? (Maybe to boot him in the balls..) Doesn't make sense. You'll say, of course, "it's only a movie", right - but are we supposed to enter into the lives of these characters as real people or simply see them as symbols or metaphors in some kind of obscure allegory? I think KK would go with the former position - he clearly wants us to care for these people - in which case the plot itself has to be tighter and more believable, for me. I have no reason to doubt Kieslowski's sincerity and nothing but admiration for his work on a technical level, but it doesn't move me. It's a hell of a sight better than that dimestore fatal coincidence rubbish of Inarritu, but I find more genuine profundity in Fassbinder, Fellini, Tarkovsky and even Peckinpah - when Warren Oates says "I love you" to his Mexican hooker girlfriend as she sits in the shower in Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia every damn hair in my body stands up - than I do with Rouge. That hasn't stopped me thoroughly enjoying it though, and won't stop me checking out the early work either.