Kieslowski - Three Colors Trilogy - Poll

Didn't even have to think for a minute.

Red, all the way.

Although The Double Life of Veronique (and Dekalog) are better.

I chose Red. I love how whenever the film threatens to get pompous life interrupts: light bulbs go out, local boys ("Turks," grumbles the building superintendent) put chewing gum in locks. And there's always Irene Jacob, drinking pear brandy and listening with the most beautiful concentration ever.

I like 'Blue' but 'Red' stays with you

Red.

Three words: Jean-Louis Trintignant.

irene fucking jacob, my god

since red's gonna win i'm throwing a vote white's way, since it always gets slighted

I haven't seen White since '94. At the time I thought it K's half-hearted attempt to make a film with an unfamiliar (to him) tone: wryness.

i once wrote an epic paper on Red, but tossed one to Blue, because it's the one i've seen most recently, and it has its moments of supreme beauty.

White, on the other hand...i...gosh, i don't even think i've been able to make it through that movie. and i love Kieslowski— the only DVD i own that isn't ripped is the big Decalogue box.

White is only 88 minutes!

Agree that the trilogy is no Dekalog, but there are plenty of Dekalog glimmers throughout. I'd have to say Red, of course, but I'm not sure Red would be as good without Blue and White. Blue, I seem to recall, is the most striking, visually.

I know I'm in the minority, but I'm going with White, the film equivalent of Zooropa. Of all three, the opening sequence of Blue, the final sequence of White, and the lightbulb in Red are my favorites.

blue w/o thinking probably red if i do

I know I'm in the minority, but I'm going with White, the film equivalent of Zooropa

wait waht

If you didn't know, The whole Trilogy coming from Criterion prob' by the end of this year.

haha i was chalking that one up to my poor familiarity w/zooropa but... yeah (xp)

I'm very curious about reading posters' experiences with these things over the years. Because I was nineteen when first released, they were the last word on Intelligent European Cinema. But Red still holds up. Blue too.

[x-post]You could make some arguement about these lining up w/the Achtung Baby, Zooropa, Pop run, but Pop doesn't = Red.

The psychological disruption resulting from the fall of the Iron Curtain and the cultural establishment of the E.U.!!!

^^if we were commenting on a YouTube clip

white. prefer la double vie to blue, which it strongly resembles. red's amazing, but not a personal favorite.

Red, but I hope White gets a few votes. I remember it had a goofy charm.

Red is the only one I've seen, but that's p great!

I thought I had read that Morbz hated either Red or Blue...probably none of my business...

No, he said on the Kieslowski thread that he liked Red.

My bad. I'm sorry. I thought he implied something disparaging on the Best Films of the 90s thread :(

that doesn't sound like him

i am and pretty much always have been a sucker for art about 'ideas' (and hence was hardcore on the kieslowski train already), was vaguely a cineaste at this time (18-19), and find beautiful women attractive so these films were pretty huge w/ me. had a definite crush on irene jacob (dating back to veronique), so much so i went to see that awful mid-nineties version of othello. i'm probably wrong (i hope so) but is this the last foreign/"art" film/set of films to attain this level of cultural currency/ubiquity? or at least that didn't owe its appeal to violence/action/date flick/whatever the appeal of amelie was? by cultural currency i basically mean 'this movie poster became a dorm room cliche' etc.

Unless you count some Aldomovar films...?

In my mind the "debate" in 1994 wasn't between Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump: more like PF vs Red. Kieslowski's rep was such that he got Best Director and Screenplay nods that year -- and Tarantino himself was a fan.

*Alomodovar obv

heh - Almodovar

btw I don't think these films are as significant as defenders (like me) argued at the time. Blue and Red are cool, chic noodling, in which we stare at beautiful women for ninety minutes. Kieslowski was lucky in that he died before his style could ossify into a manner (and kitsch).

i dont think 'blue' is particularly radical or inventive & its in some ways p trite but i do think its p keenly felt idk if that makes it 'significant'

i'm probably wrong (i hope so) but is this the last foreign/"art" film/set of films to attain this level of cultural currency/ubiquity? or at least that didn't owe its appeal to violence/action/date flick/whatever the appeal of amelie was? by cultural currency i basically mean 'this movie poster became a dorm room cliche' etc.

I like these movies but I think the 'trilogy!! colors!!! do you see!!' gimmick is probably responsible for a lot of the interest?

I voted blue but I haven't seen white for a long time, barely remember it.

i'm probably wrong (i hope so) but is this the last foreign/"art" film/set of films to attain this level of cultural currency/ubiquity? or at least that didn't owe its appeal to violence/action/date flick/whatever the appeal of amelie was? by cultural currency i basically mean 'this movie poster became a dorm room cliche' etc.

Alfred OTM on Almodovar. Might not meet your criteria, but what about Y tu mama tambien or Amores perros?

x-posts

yeah i guess almodovar, i'm one of those ppl that forgets that alot of ppl like his recent stuff as much as/more than his 80s stuff.

o duh the three amigos also

didn't like blue at the time, v disappointing after double life
liked white but it felt slight at the time, my opinion of it greatly improved after *rescreening* it
loved red

i don't know how i forgot almodovar since when i thought about irene jacob and her floudering in hollywood i thought of penelope cruz temporarily (and on occasion still) suffering the same fate

In my mind the "debate" in 1994 wasn't between Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump: more like PF vs Red. Kieslowski's rep was such that he got Best Director and Screenplay nods that year -- and Tarantino himself was a fan.

IIRC, it's mentioned in Criterion TDLoV book that Tarentino wanted Irene Jacob to play Mia Wallace, but she was already commited to Red.

and thus a life was saved

They certainly did have cachet. I wasn't the only guy at the time who bought the Blue score (by "Van Den Budenmayer").

also:

Van Den Budenmayer[After Kieślowski's death, Harvey Weinstein (then head of Miramax Films, which distributed the last four Kieślowski films in the US) wrote a eulogy for him in Premiere magazine. In it he said that Quentin Tarantino saw The Double Life of Véronique at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival and took note of its star, Irène Jacob. He apparently wrote the part of Bruce Willis's wife in Pulp Fiction for her, but she was unavailable for the shoot.

If you didn't know, The whole Trilogy coming from Criterion prob' by the end of this year.

I'm going to have to buy it again??

Thanks for the PF clarification Alfred!

blue had a huge impact on me when it came out. I went back and saw it a second time with a date. that date became my wife.

a couple years ago we were having a yard sale and an old lady pulled a vhs copy of blue out of a box. my wife described the movie to her and how it was our first date. the old lady said, "and you still married him? must've been love."

so yeah, blue.

happy birthday krzysztof kieslowski!

Red probably the most powerful of these movies, but I have seen White the most.

BLUE BLUE BLUE

white. white is hilarious. none of the others are hilarious.

when i was a teenager my favorite was red hands down though, mostly cuz of irene jacob and her bubble gum.

irene jacob is so pretty u_u

I'm no authority on such things but in '94 she was the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.

no doubt

also the cinematography, the motion of the camera, simply outrageous

This refers back to something I posted about twice last year: the scene near the end in Blue where a song links all the characters and subplots together at a critical moment. I wrote at the time that I'd seen this device used in Donnie Darko, Magnolia, and Blue; I later added Alan Rudolph's Welcome to L.A. I found an earlier use tonight: Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort. It's like Magnolia in that the characters are actually singing; in the other three films the music is background. My friend, who immediately shoots down every theory I have linking certain disparate films together, assures me that this is probably a very common device used in lots of musicals from the '30s and '40s. But she couldn't name any offhand.

Oh god I just saw a 35mm screening of Blue (whilst high and devouring Dr. Pepper and popcorn that I snuck in) and I think I had a religious experience. What a fucking masterful film!

http://strangewood.tumblr.com/post/90098472452/krzysztof-kieslowski-photographed-by-piotr-jaxa

what an artistically intimidating assignment

I guess I should point out that I was supposed to watch Blue at AMC Cocowalk at 10:05 in February '94 but arrived late; instead, my friend and I went to the 10:35 showing of Reality Bites.

Sorry, didn't get a lot out of A Short Film About Killing. Garishly-toned art-splatter film for a while, then it's Dead Man Walking. I suppose it's meant as a carefully constructed test for how one feels about capital punishment. Make the killer as loathsome as can be (he's even ready to hijack his mom's grave), leave you to gauge your reaction when he's executed.

"buy a car! a new tv!" "what for? i never watch it. always the same crap. or... i could bury the money. put it in a little jar." "sure!" "that would be nice."

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, December 8, 2012

laughed at this now

The Criterion box set defines "gorgeous."

btw: https://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/seasons/krzysztof-kie%C5%9Blowski-decalogue-25th-anniversary-retrospective

That's an unfortunate encoded URL with the Blowski.

forgot about that sequence in which Julie and the boy who took her husband's Christ pendant fruitlessly tries to return it

Newest addition to something I've posted about a few times in this thread, sequences where a song plays as the images link together a number of different characters: the folk song that plays at the end of Mad Men's sixth episode, season one. (New for me--just started watching.)

http://vimeo.com/29164651

Feels like that happened at the end of every third episode ofHouse, Sex and the City, even Entourage...?

I know for sure it happens at least once in Exotica c v possibly it happens every time you hear the song "Everybody Knows". But Egoyan actually does a really good job of using his montages to play up very pointed contrasts not between scenes that seem superficially different but are similar at the core but instead between ine scene which seems superficially innocuous but divulges a very different meaning when viewed closer, a deeper meaning that is parallel to what seems to be the obvious meaning of the second scene that it us intercut with (though that scene also has a secret meaning that is not yet divulged as well) Such as Eric's first trip to the ballet/the introduction of regular Exotica customer Francis

Lol Merry Christmas ILX

Ending of most (every?) season of The Wire does this.

Maybe it's becoming a TV cliche--so many acclaimed series I still have to catch up on (my seven-year delay in starting Mad Men being a case in point).

Added to the Criterion channel on Hulu:
The Scar (1976)
Camera Buff (1979)
No End (1985)
Blind Chance (1987)
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
A Short Film About Love (1989)

I rewatched all three colors this week and for me it's Blue >>>>>>>> White > Red.

otm

though I prefer Red they're pretty even, Blue towers over both

I finished the Dekalog yesterday

The cinematography in Blue by Slawomir Idziak is just so great. Though perhaps it's even better in The Double Life of Veronique. The two other cinematographers aren't as good.

red is finally my favorite

can't believe i've never posted in this thread before

"buy a car! a new tv!" "what for? i never watch it. always the same crap. or... i could bury the money. put it in a little jar." "sure!" "that would be nice."

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, December 8, 2012

this scene is so fucking funny

this is not directly trilogy related but man Blind Chance absolutely rules. I really need to find a copy of No End as well

i saw no end at the momi a few years ago. not a great movie for a first date but still: wonderful, kind of like if blue were a ghost story

can anybody vouch for the movie he wrote but didn't direct? title escapes me rn

heaven. never seen it

nah it was this one, 'Big Animal' https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246593/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_7

thought about renting it but wasn't sure

oh huh there was one that wasn't heaven???

The only parts of Red for which I'll make allowances are the phone conversations with the boyfriend.

Otherwise my god Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Three Colours trilogy is on Amazon Prime at the moment, btw, in the UK at least.

I chose Red. I love how whenever the film threatens to get pompous life interrupts: light bulbs go out, local boys ("Turks," grumbles the building superintendent) put chewing gum in locks. And there's always Irene Jacob, drinking pear brandy and listening with the most beautiful concentration ever.

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 20, 2011 3:02 PM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is otm

I know!

i think the film's construction is remarkable. all those echoes in the images and dialogue, from scene to scene practically; with a heavier touch they'd be unbearable, with a lighter touch they'd be invisible

a little nervous about this one still but https://www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2019/03/28/sonata-on-human-connection-red-1994/

lol i forgot i cannibalized my last post in this thread for a sentence in this piece

only got to this now but really wonderful piece, risk pays off imo

yeah White is the best one

hm!

White was certainly may fav back in the day, for the humor. Funny, I almost revisited Red last night, for the first time in 15yrs or so.

Blue was one of the first movies I went for when the pandemic hit, I think it has an amazing opening sequence and stays good but nothing lives up to that tunnel or the extreme close up of the eye... Ditto for opening of Red, which is also funnier than I remember. White is just the most consistent one imo, and it's hilarious, with the other two I find myself looking at the cinematography, sort of disengaged from the story.

like when he gets dumped out of the suitcase and looks up and says "I'M HOME!" and it's the most drab ugly looking patch of mud and snow with a bulldozer, and then cue the orchestra. lmao

xxp I watched Red last night and White the night before--I watched Blue all the way back in March and for whatever reason didn't feel compelled to rewatch, glad I did

xp i don't particularly like these films but this is for sure the best moment

red is stacked with amazing moments but i always enjoy hearing from white truthers

The Double life of Véronique was really beautiful! I hadn’t seen it before now. The metaphysical story that remained unexplained, the sense of a connection between lives, the music, use of color, cinematography were all incredible. And Irène Jacob

I watched Veronique last night. Beautiful film.

Things that stand out today:
- there are a LOT of hands around throats, mainly Jacobs' (puppet, or otherwise).
- her falls are oddly affecting.
- the flasher bloke with his massive cockenballs, what was that all about?
- the ending is sympathetic magic? She touches the tree, and her dad, working on wood with his lathe, feels some strong connection?
- the miming was kinda bad; made me think of Lynch, mainly Llorando
- how literary it was. I feel like I've read a bunch of novels like this.
- irene jacobs
- her taste in men, christ
- the lawyer! (Lynch again?)

Anyway, I'm already happy to believe I dreamed some of these, given the nature of the film.