Thursday, June 7, 2007

Three Colors trilogy (1993-1994)

Directed by Krzystzof Kieslowski. Starring Juliette Binoche, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Irene Jacob, and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Kieslowski's final work, a series of films inspired by the tenets of the French revolution (liberty, equality, and fraternity), is one of the few modern pieces of cinema that makes its points subtly, through its luminous images, rather than bludgeoning the audience with heavy-handed dialogue. In BLUE, Binoche is stunning as a widow who tries to escape her old life; WHITE finds Zamachowski returning to his native Poland, working his way up through the new capitalist economy, and trying to win back his estranged wife; and the masterful RED deals with the unique friendship between fashion model Jacob and retired judge Trintignant. The films defy expectation and categorization, and while each exists as a piece unto itself the trilogy gains power when seen as a unified work, especially in the great final sequence of RED, which with a grand brushstroke ties all three films together magnificently. This is possibly the definitive work about what it meant to be a citizen of the world at the turn of the millennium, but its ideas and appeal are timeless.

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