The first installment of the best trilogy ever created

Rating: 10/10 (3 August 2006)

"Blue" (along with "White" and "Red") is a cinematic masterpiece and one of (if not the) most innovative and powerful films of the 90s. Director-writer Krzysztof Kieslowski suggests an anti-climactic approach to a more visual interpretation of both physical and mental pain. How does one cope with loss of a loved one? How do we continue living if we're totally alone? Kieslowski forms a narrative around the characters in the story, and around their whole existence. Although the story is a deep focus of the heroine or protagonist, it shows the world both through and outside of her eyes.
Juliette Binoche stars as Julie, a successful woman who has everything one would ever want, until one day when driving in a car with her family, the car crashes killing both her husband and daughter. After losing her family, Julie detaches herself from any memories, thoughts, and pain by giving up everything she's ever wanted, and starting a new life in an obscure area. Julie's deep passion always was and will be with music, and through her subconscious the music comes back and reminds her that she once was a happy woman.
In the first five minutes of the movie you're completely hypnotized. It opens up with a closeup shot of a wheel from a car spinning on the street as the car drives. The cinematography sucks you in and almost foreshadows a more saddening mood, suggesting this road ends before the car reaches the destination. We're only shown the back of the characters in the car and we're left with very little to think about in terms of their psychology. Kieslowski knew exactly what he was doing by opening the scene in such a way. When the car crashes (in the most detailed and realistic crash scene I've ever seen), the movie cuts to a closeup of someone's eye in which we can see a man's reflection. We automatically know we are inside someone's head and that they are almost too tired to look at the man. Kieslowski's incredibly cinematic opening scene is just the beginning of a visually stunning and deep film.
The eye is that of Julie's, who's lying in bed as the man tells her that her husband and her daughter are dead. We expect a big scene where the woman breaks down, smashing everything around her in a dramatic attempt to kill herself. But all we see is her shift her head and we know that she's suffering without having to show it. The idea of "Blue" is to question whether or not someone can start over and heal without going through the mourning process. We are lead to believe that Julie can, but something always comes back and reminds us that maybe we are wrong. Some scenes create this illusion by having the picture fade to black as we hear music then fades back to the picture. We all know that a technique in editing where fading to black is used to represent passage of time. But in this situation, it's nothing of the sort. Julie constantly blocks any memory from her mind, but the mind always pushes those memories out. Her husband was a composer and the music she suddenly hears is both a reflection of her past and a reminder to her that she is still alive.
Every minute of the movie we are exposed to the pain that Julie is experiencing. This is more of a statement than it is an expression though, since Kieslowski uses magnificent techniques to draw out this emotion. In one scene, Julie is swimming in a pool (where she goes every night to let out her physical energy so that she doesn't explode with everything she's been keeping in), and her husband's music starts playing in her head. She pauses and allows herself to sway back into the pool, in the part of it that represents death. Juliette Binoche describes this as a form of a fetus who's not yet pushed into the real world.
Kieslowski loves to pay attention to detail. Everything that's on the screen is a form of reality and a symbol of pain, suffering and isolation. For example, the scene in which Julie is in a restaurant drinking coffee exemplified just how much this woman is emotionally constricted. She hears music that she and her husband wrote, and she automatically shelters herself away from it, to disallow herself to have her memories come back. She quietly puts a cube into her coffee and watches the sugar turn brown. To some extent this is a perfect example of how not only Julie is withdrawn from life and others, but so are we, the audience.
There's no doubt that this allegory is a masterpiece in film-making. Kieslowski often moves in and out of the frame with the camera, showing us a world that we're meant to see, instead of just placing an element in a frame and keeping it there to blatantly smack us with the message. To some, "Blue" is a masterpiece and to me it's also inspiration. Everything from its incredible cinematography to the haunting and memorable score, is flawless. Whether or not "Blue" is the least favorite of the trilogy, it comes in at my list (and many other's) as one of the best movies of all time.