The late great Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski cleverly "adapted" the three French ideals -liberty, equality, fraternity -into three thought-provoking modern-day dramas about people who cope with personal losses and tragedies. In BLUE, the first of the trilogy, a widow tries to set herself free (and gain liberty) from her emotional baggages. The second film, WHITE, is about a jilted man's outrageous plot to get even (thus, equality) with his ex-wife. The last film, RED, which is also Kieslowski's final film before he died in 1996, is about a lonely old man who is embittered by the memories of his youth and finds accidental companionship (fraternity) with a young model. All three films are understated in their tone, economical in their dialogs, elliptical in their editing and plotting (there are some mind-boggling flashbacks and flash forwards in WHITE), and haunting in their atmosphere. The references to the three French ideals are actually quite tenuous, and in fact more and more so as the trilogy progresses. BLUE is the only one that deals with the ideal of "freedom" (albeit emotional freedom) in a concrete way, inviting us to ponder its meanings and its attainability. WHITE treats the concept of "equality" in a rather subversive and satiric way, and it clearly wants us to rethink its meanings rather than accepting it at face value. And RED has to do with "fraternity" only circumstantially, and has more to do with the issue of destiny, and how our past is linked to our present. The three films are set not just in France, but also in Poland and Switzerland, and WHITE has primarily Polish dialogs. Hence, a sort of universality is intended.
The three films are also linked in various ways. All three films involve an unfaithful lover who dies, in one way or another. All three films involve a chance encounter between the distressed protagonist and a sympathetic observer -the widow and the mistress in BLUE, Karol and Mikolaj in WHITE, the retired judge and the model in RED. Both BLUE and WHITE are about people who move to new surroundings to escape from his or her troubled pasts. And RED, ironically, is about someone who never leaves his home in order to wallow in his self-pity.
Kieslowski had done this sort of thing before. In 1988, he "adapted" the Ten Commandments into ten one-hour, modern-day dramas, collectively titled DECALOGUE, that make us rethink the meanings of the commandments. In the segment for "Thou Shalt Not Steal," for instance, we witness the kidnapping (the theft) of a child from her adopted parents by her natural mother, who thinks she has a right to her custody. Thus, it turns clear-cut moral ideals into real-world dramas that have no clear-cut solutions or judgments.
Miramax released long-awaited Region-1 DVDs for the Three Colors trilogy, and they all have superb video transfers and rewarding extra material. Kieslowski expert Annette Insdorf provides excellent running commentaries for all three films. She analyzes the visual, aural, and editorial techniques, the thematic significance, as well as how the final films deviate from their original screenplays. She points out that Kieslowski films often deal with abstract concepts, such as fate, death, and grief, in very concrete ways. She makes an observant remark about the apparent twist of fate in the opening of BLUE: if the hitchhiker were picked up by the family, the ensuing tragedy might not occur. She points out that the dream-like wedding scene in WHITE, which many assume is a flashback, could also be a flash forward (a very interesting, and plausible, notion). She offers her interpretations to the many symbolisms in the films, such as the frequent fades to black in BLUE, the recurring shot of a stooped old person at a garbage bin, the significance of the concerto music in BLUE, the tango theme in WHITE, and the bolero score in RED. She also explains the intentionally cryptic endings of WHITE and RED.
Each disc comes with several featurettes that comprise about 100 minutes of interviews and commentaries by the cast and crew, Insdorf, film critic Geoff Andrew, and film director Agnieszka Holland. The BLUE and WHITE discs also contain some early short films by Kieslowski: CONCERT OF WISHES, THE TROLLEY, THE FACE, THE OFFICE. All three discs contain a fascinating segment called "Kieslowski's Cinema Lesson," in which the director explains his intentions in one particular scene. The WHITE and RED discs contain behind-the-scenes footage of Kieslowski giving directions on the set. For Kieslowski fans, perhaps the most poignant clip in these supplements is that of Kieslowski announcing his retirement at the '94 Cannes festival, included on the RED disc.
The late great Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski cleverly "adapted" the three French ideals -liberty, equality, fraternity -into three thought-provoking modern-day dramas about people who cope with personal losses and tragedies. In BLUE, the first of the trilogy, a widow tries to set herself free (and gain liberty) from her emotional baggages. The second film, WHITE, is about a jilted man's outrageous plot to get even (thus, equality) with his ex-wife. The last film, RED, which is also Kieslowski's final film before he died in 1996, is about a lonely old man who is embittered by the memories of his youth and finds accidental companionship (fraternity) with a young model. All three films are understated in their tone, economical in their dialogs, elliptical in their editing and plotting (there are some mind-boggling flashbacks and flash forwards in WHITE), and haunting in their atmosphere.
The films regard the three French ideals quite indirectly, and in fact more and more so as the trilogy progresses. BLUE is the only one that deals with the ideal of "freedom" (albeit emotional freedom) in a concrete way, inviting us to ponder its meanings and its attainability. WHITE treats the concept of "equality" in a rather subversive and satiric manner, and it clearly wants us to rethink its meanings rather than accepting it at face value. And RED has to do with "fraternity" only circumstantially, and has more to do with the subject of destiny, and how our past is linked to our present. The three films are set not just in France, but also in Poland and Switzerland, and WHITE has primarily Polish dialogs. Hence, a sort of universality is intended.
The three films are also linked in various ways. All three films involve an unfaithful lover who dies, in one way or another. All three films involve a chance encounter between the distressed protagonist and a sympathetic observer -the widow and the mistress in BLUE, Karol and Mikolaj in WHITE, the retired judge and the model in RED. Both BLUE and WHITE are about people who move to new surroundings to escape from his or her troubled pasts. And RED, ironically, is about someone who never leaves his home in order to wallow in his self-pity.
Kieslowski had done this sort of thing before. In 1988, he "adapted" the Ten Commandments into ten one-hour, modern-day dramas, collectively titled DECALOGUE, that invite us to rethink the meanings of those principles. In the segment for "Thou Shalt Not Steal," for instance, we witness the kidnapping (the theft) of a child from her adopted parents by her natural mother, who thinks she has a right to her custody. Thus, it turns clear-cut moral ideals into real-world dramas that have no clear-cut solutions or judgments.
The THREE COLORS TRILOGY (as well as DECALOGUE) has the scope and richness that truly earn the films' standing as one of the high points of modern cinematic achievements.
Criterion Blu-ray edition of THREE COLORS offers an improved video transfer over the 2003 Miramax/Buena Vista DVD edition. This is not merely due to the inherent advantage of high-def over standard-def, but also to the fact that Criterion created new remastered transfers that look much better than the old transfers. The Buena Vista edition looks good for its time, but compared to Criterion's effort, the colors often look too warm and saturated, and details in the shadows are often obscured. In a trilogy where colors have great visual significance, the better video representation on the Criterion Blu-ray is much welcome and needed.
Criterion also offers DTS HD-MA 2.0 surround tracks for the three films, but you may need to do a bit of funky adjustments to get them to work. Note that these are 2.0, not 5.1 tracks. Criterion expects you to use Pro Logic Surround decoding on your audio receiver to turn the 2.0 tracks into surround tracks. However, older receivers, like mine, may not be able to apply Pro Logic to DTS audio. So what I did was I had my Blu-ray player first convert the DTS audio into PCM multi-channel audio and pass it to my receiver, and then I was able to apply Pro Logic to the PCM audio. To compound matters, the WHITE disc's surround audio was encoded incorrectly, yielding 1.0 mono after applying Pro Logic. Criterion is currently fixing this problem, and will offer a replacement in December to those who already bought the set. Contact Criterion's point man Jon Mulvaney ( mulvaney@criterion.com ) regarding the replacement. On the BLUE and RED discs, the surround tracks do work, and with much higher bit rate they do sound better than the surround tracks on the Buena Vista discs.
The fully-loaded Criterion set contains several new supplements, but is also missing a quite a few extras on the Buena Vista set.
Bad news first. The wonderful full-length audio commentaries by film professor Annette Insdorf on the Buena Vista set are gone. Also gone are most of the interviews done by MK2 (producer Marin Karmitz's company) in 2001, with actresses Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, and Irene Jacob, editor Jacques Witta (for BLUE), and Karmitz (for BLUE and WHITE). Most of the MK2 featurettes are also gone: "A Discussion on Kieslowski's Later Years", "A Discussion on Working with Kieslowski", "Behind the Scenes of White with Kieslowski", and "Behind the Scenes of Red with Kieslowski". Selected scenes commentaries by Delpy and Jacob are also gone. Also noticeably missing are two student films by Kieslowski: "Concert of Wishes" and "The Office". All these valuable video and audio extras are NOT on the Criterion set. Needless to say, those who have the Buena Vista set should probably hold on to it.
The Criterion set does retain some of the old extras. It does have several of the MK2 featurettes: "Kieslowski's Early Years", "Reflections on BLUE" (featuring the cast and crew, Insdorf, film critic Geoff Andrew, and film director Agnieszka Holland), Marin Karmitz's interview for RED, and Jacques Witta's interview for RED. It has Binoche's selected scenes commentary for BLUE. All the wonderful "cinema lessons" by Kieslowski are also retained. The footage of Kieslowski announcing his retirement at Cannes also, thankfully, survived the cut. Also retained are two of Kieslowski's student films, "The Tram" and "The Face", although the picture quality of "The Tram" is noticeably worse than that on the Buena Vista DVD, with more print damage and a much darker picture.
The all-new extras offered by Criterion are all excellent. Each film comes with a 22-minute "video essay", done by Insdorf for BLUE, film critic Tony Rayns for WHITE, and film writer Dennis Lim for RED. These segments are essentially audio commentaries with film clips and stills. While they are well-written and informative, they seem a little too terse, due to their short lengths, compared to Insdorf's full-length commentaries for the Buena Vista DVDs.
There are new interviews with composer Zbigniew Preisner, actors Delpy, Jacob, and Zbigniew Zamachowski, and screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Criterion usually does great interviews, and these are no exception. They are all more in-depth and comprehensive than their MK2 counterparts. They were all shot in 2011. Ten years after they were interviewed by MK2, their enthusiasm and admiration for Kieslowski's work are apparently unchanged.
There are also three wonderful documentaries not on the Buena Vista set. The 16-minute "Seven Women of Different Ages" (1978) shows seven ballet dancers in each day of the week, from a little ballerina to an old ballet teacher, subtly depicting the journey of a dancer and of life itself. "Talking Heads" (1980), running 12 minutes, interviews several people in the order of their ages about who they are and what they want to be; it brings to mind Michael Apted's UP documentaries. And there is a 1-hour documentary made for Danish TV in 1995 called "Krzysztof Kieslowski: I'm So-So", where the just-retired director reminisces about his career, from his early films to his later masterpieces, and we hear many of his pessimistic views about art, life, and politics. He concludes the film by saying, "To know is not my job. Not knowing is."
The Criterion set also offers a fairly substantial 75-page booklet that includes a 18-page excerpt from the book "Kieslowski on Kieslowski" as well as interviews of the three cinematographers of THREE COLORS. The last page of the booklet also mentions the fact that Pro Logic is needed to hear surround sound, as I mentioned above.
Yes, this Criterion Blu-ray edition is a pricey set, and, unlike the Buena Vista edition, the three films are not sold separately. But the strength of the video and audio qualities and the comprehensive supplements still make this a worthy purchase.
Buy Three Colors: Blue, White, Red (The Criterion Collection) (1994) Now
The Three Colors Trilogy comprises 3 superb films (Bleu/Blanc/Rouge) by the late, great director Krzysztof Kieslowski. The films use the symbolism expressed by the colors of the French flag for their themes (liberty, equality, fraternity). The Three Colors is Kieslowski's crowning achievement, and Rouge, his final film, is probably his masterpiece. That's saying something, because some of his previous films (Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique) are among the greatest films of the last 20 years! I saw Bleu (with Juliette Binoche) a long time ago and was very impressed. It's a sad but beautful movie, about a composer's widow and how she copes with life after his death. Blanc (with Julie Delpy) is about life for a man after he is unceremoniously dumped by his wife; it's the lightest and most comedic of the three films. Rouge (with Irene Jacob) is my favorite and explores the melancholy (and platonic) relationship that develops between a young lady and an older man. Jacob is quite simply a goddess, and if you can tear your eyes away from her long enough to pay attention to the movie, you'll find this is a thematically rich film with solid, subtle performances (Kieslowski was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for Rouge in 1995). I am lucky enough to own a DVD of Rouge which has a ton of extras (making of, deleted scenes, soundtrack samples, trailers, film-making lesson by the director, Cannes festival interviews, extended interviews with editor, director, and *sigh* Irene Jacob). I believe the upcoming Miramax DVDs retain these features (with subtitles), which are in French. More Americans should experience these films. They are so well-made and lovingly crafted that they put to shame all the multi-million dollar, shallow, explosion-fests routinely shovelled out by Hollywood nowadays. Next to Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslowski's death in the 1990s is one of the most tragic for cinema. Younger filmmakers should hope one day to approach even an iota of the MANY brilliant masterpieces created of these film masters. Watch The Three Colors Trilogy! This is film-making at its finest and totally a 5 STAR recommendation!Read Best Reviews of Three Colors: Blue, White, Red (The Criterion Collection) (1994) Here
It is absolutely shocking that it has taken so long for this trilogy of masterpieces to reach DVD. These are, without a doubt, my favorite films of the 1990s. The late Kieslowski was working at the top of his game and his presence in filmmaking is sorely missed. Blue and Red are my favorites out of the three, with Juliette Binoche illuminating every scene. Red (which is set in Geneva and not Paris as the amazon review incorrectly states)is a brilliant way to wrap the trilogy. Irene Jacob sparring with the great Jean Louis Tritignant in their lovely and heartbreaking scenes. There are so many wonderful moments, including the final moment when Jacob's face on the giant billboard becomes a haunting coda that will reduce you to tears...simply because it is shear genius on Kieslowski's part. Like his contemporary Wim Wenders, Kieslowski marched to the beat of his own drum and gave the world beautiful, if not always easy, films to cherish.Want Three Colors: Blue, White, Red (The Criterion Collection) (1994) Discount?
This review refers to the Three Colors Trilogy(Boxed Set) DVD edition by Miramax.....To give this trilogy 5 stars hardly begins to express the way I feel about this trilogy. The illustrious career of masterful film maker Krzystof Kieslowski is capped off by this wonderful gift he has left us with. Those of you that have seen it will understand what I mean when I say that once you have viewed these films, and the characters in them,they will stay with you always.
Although told as three separate stories "Blue", "White" and "Red" (the order in which they should be watched ), you will find a connection of life and happenstance relating to the main characters of each story. It should be viewed as one long story. Think of it as if going to a fine dining establishment, where the chef has prepared each course to compliment the other.
In "Blue", we get lost in Julie's world(Julitte Binoche), a woman who has lost all that is dear to her in a horrible car accident. Her husband, an acclaimed composer and her little daughter gone forever. She tries to shut herself off from the world, shedding material possesions and shunnung her friends, but is drawn back into life by some revealing facts she has learned about her dead husband.
"White" will draw you into it's web of intigue and passion, as a Polish man(Zbigniew Zamachowski) plans the ultimate revenge on his beautiful French wife(Julie Delpy)that he has lost but still loves.
"Red" is the story of chance meetings and fate. Do they happen by coincidence or do we unwittingly make our own destinies? Valentine (Irene Jacob) is a beautiful young model who's life takes a turn in a new direction when she accidentally hits a dog with her car. The dog belongs to a mysterious older man, whose past may be the answer to her future.
I have only given a short synopsis of each story, as they must be viewed fresh by the first time watcher. You will find them an experience you will want to relive soon and often. Kieslowski's unique film making style combined with the intricate camera work of Piotr Sobocinski, the lulling music of Zbigniew Preisner, beautiful screenplays by Kieslowski and Piesiewicz and a cast that turns in no less than stellar performances will move you like no other film ever has.
I used to watch these films, whenever they appeared on my cable Independent Film Channel. The DVDs sold singley seemed a little high priced, but now that they are in this boxed set at such a reasonable price, I jumped at the chance to own them. The discs are excellent. Terrific picture, colors and sound. They are presented in Widescrren and are in Dolby Digital Surround Sound. The subtitles are clear and distinct as well.
Each disc has a wide variety of bonus material of it's own to check out(see tech info for complete list), but I highly reccommend viewing these films on their own first, and then again with the insightful commentary by Annette Insdorf.
I can think of only one other film that has had such a personal effect on me. That is "Schindler's List". If you have already seen these films, this boxed set is well worth the price. If you have not seen them and you really enjoy fine film making give these a try. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I have.
For more wonderful views by this great director, check out The Decalogue (Special Edition Complete Set)
Thanx....Laurie
the soundtracks:Bleu: Bande Originale Du Film -
White: Bande Originale Du Film -
Red: Bande Originale Du Film
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