Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood, three famous words, the “sacred ternary” of the French Revolution; inspiration for social change turned sour one might say. As soon as the words of the philosopher Louis Claude de Saint Martin were on everybody’s lips, bloodbath after bloodbath followed. How could the impulse of the French Revolution turn into its almost complete opposite? How could such a high ideal culminate in emperor Bonaparte? Yet, these three words are still very modern aspirations and hopes of the human race. And they have so much to add to what we are exploring in these blogs. To start looking at this conundrum we can turn to contemporary art, to the work of Krzysztof Kieslowski who offered us the trilogy of movies Blue, White and Red, specifically inspired on the sacred ternary.
By turning to art I am attempting to look at social concerns from a universal perspective. That is the advantage of a good movie, a play, a myth or a legend. Each one of us can see something different and, after some time, still something else. I have seen the trilogy quite a few times, long before I became interested in how the movies illuminate the social dimension of our lives through the power of images.
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Kieslowski’s art explores themes encompassing all of the human condition in a way hardly possible anywhere else than in Eastern Europe, with existential depth and complete dedication to his task of movie director. Handling a camera with political tact and artistic integrity was something that he had to juggle with and experience the hard way in the days of the Polish communist regime. The political was never too far from spiritual considerations in the director’s work. Earlier in his career he had completed ten one-hour movies treating on the Ten Commandments (The Decalogue). Not that he had suddenly turned Catholic, or religious. In effect there was nothing that he treated with more scorn than dogma (see Kieslowski’s I’m So-So). No, quite simply put, the commandments evoked for Kieslowski central riddles of human existence. And those riddles are framed in vignettes of existential life-questions; no pat answers, no easy moralistic precepts, no preaching; the stories are his answers, nothing more is needed. The trilogy, coming toward the end of his life, forms the culmination of Kieslowski’s lifework, his masterpiece, according to more than one critic. Before his death he was contemplating working on a new trilogy of films about heaven, hell, and limbo.
The Trilogy
Blue, white, and red are the colors of the French flag from left to right, and the story of each film is loosely based on one ofthe three ideals of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, fraternity. In these lyrical and cathartic movies the themes are approached not from the larger social context, but from a deeply individualistic perspective. And yet, if we let their images live in our soul, slowly but surely something emerges that ties the personal to the social, the particular to the universal. The human condition, the struggle through alienation, blows of fate, death, fortune and misfortune are raised above their ordinariness and consecrated. The quest for meaning crowns all of Kieslowski’s lifelong effort.
The movies, especially White and Red, are slow movies by American standards. True, Kieslowski has approached a Western theme and has shot two of his movies in Geneva (Red and Blue) and they are performed in French (except Polish and French in White). Still, the characters behave from an utterly Eastern soul mood. Kieslowski revisits western ideas with an eastern sensitivity that deepens them. We could say that the excesses of the French Revolution revisited Eastern Europe and they return to us through a Polish soul that has had time and incentives to ask itself what are liberty, equality and fraternity. After all he was one of the first Polish directors to follow with interest the days of Solidarnosc. (See No End).
The trilogy invites us to slow down and truly see what is in front of our eyes. The dialogues are short and pregnant, but much happens just in between and in small, seemingly insignificant events. The viewer is asked to appreciate details: a background scene, a pen that does not work, a sentence that could be dismissed as banal, an image that reminds of a previous one, the climax emphasized by objects of the color of the movie, the contrast between two individuals, the parallels between stories, a tune, etc.
The three movies are deeply interwoven and interconnected. Short sequences of a movie appear in another. Some scenes weave through all of the trilogy, such as an old woman or man recycling a bottle. Notice though the very different responses of the central character in each of the movies.
The courtroom is a unifying theme throughout the trilogy. In Blue it appears through a lawyer (secondary character), in Red through a retired judge; in White plaintiff and defendant are the central characters. It is this subtle language of the form and the images that places the personal in relation to the social, the particular in relation to the universal. Still one more key of reading: Blue has the mood of a tragedy; White of a comedy, though a dark one; Red is a pure drama.
For the goals of A Revolution of Hope blog see Saying Yes to a Global Paradigm Shift: a Manifesto
Tags: cultural activism, global paradigm shift, movies, Tri-sector Partnerships
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