Addition and subtraction.

Rating: Null/10 (3 November 2005)

Taken as a whole, the "Thee Colors" trilogy is certainly a work that is greater than the sum of it's part. It represents the totality of life by way of trichotomy, and by a process of addition, each film adding on another aspect, another color, to what came before. Blue is tragedy, white is comedy, and red is... well, it is indeed hard to pin down, but I would think that it is perhaps romance. At the same time, like the way bits of each film make guest appearances in the others, each of these aspects, each color, is mixed with parts of the others. Therefore, it's important to see all the films, and they really should ideally be seen in their chronological order, for only at the end of it all - when it all adds up - do we find the sense of completion that gives the work its true magic. Therefore, I won't be commenting on Blue and pretend the others don't exist. They must be taken together as a three-course meal.
In light of this it may seem almost paradoxical that each of the individual films in certain respects are based on an opposite process, an act of subtraction. The beauty and poetry of these works is just as often as not a result of what is not said, what is left out and must be inferred, what is never confirmed, what is left hanging. This act of subtraction is given most poignantly in "Blue".
The accident that opens the movie and grants Julie that tragic liberty that she never asked for and never wanted, sets in play a process of removal that we feel cannot be stopped, until it either reaches its conclusion or some greater outer force intervenes. Julie never, for a second, attempts to restore the fragments of her lost life. Once the process of destruction is started, she does not attempt to stop it. The bulk of the movie shows her systematically destroying what is left, and all memories of what was. She gets rid of the mansion where she lived with her family, including all furniture and belongings. She angrily, in an act of stunning subdued violence, chews and devours a lollipop that had been her daughter's. Finally, she tries to destroy the score for her husband's symphony for the Unification of Europe.
In a movie about a woman who has lost her husband and her child, we may expect certain kinds of scenes: flashbacks, memory sequences, returns to what has been lost. These are all notably missing from "Blue". Julie doesn't return, not to her past or to the world of the living, not until outside forces  Kieslowski's wonderful random acts of genius storytelling - intrude.
At the end of the day, "Blue", mercifully, ends on a note of affirmation of life, optimistically, even happily. It is, of course, a "happy ending" unlike any other in cinema, one that can only be brought about by way of the most extreme grief and loss. It's a phenomenological process of sorts, in the Husserlian sense. For Husserl, only by removing the objects of consciousness, by constantly subtracting what is in it, can we hope to arrive at understanding of consciousness itself. For Julie, only be removing everything that her life contained, by going down to the bare bones of her self, can she truly find herself, and start living again. In the end, life wins out and starts anew. Even after the greatest apocalypse, some seeds of life have escaped death, and they will continue to grow and to flower.
This is one of my favorite movies of all time, an opinion that is, I believe, shared by everyone who sees it. It's more than a trip to the movies. It's even more than an experience of immense beauty, even if it is, of course, that too. It is, in my opinion, an opportunity to take part in a process of discovery of what it is to be human, that will leave you a better person afterwards.