”Blue, White, and Red Trilogy” is Kieslowski’s successful exploration of love and the meaning of life. As the first part of the trilogy, “Blue”, because of the film’s use of color and the film’s theme complement each other, has become a A model of its kind.
In the human visual world, color can not only reproduce nature, but also a symbol of emotion. It can convey people’s emotions, is a manifestation of the externalization of people’s inner world, and is a symbol of intangible things that refer to the human spiritual world. As for the use of color in the film, although the use of color has a certain sociality, this sociality is very low. Due to the difference in personal experience, national habits, national era, etc., filmmakers and audiences will inevitably have different understandings of film color. . Therefore, in order to enhance the effectiveness of film color dissemination, filmmakers try to enhance the audience’s perception of color as much as possible. Therefore, in addition to paying attention to the socially agreed meaning of color (for example, yellow was an imperial color in ancient China), filmmakers consider more of the original sensory effect of color. Therefore, when the film color expresses the artistic conception of the film, it can more directly and credibly convey the inner emotions of the parties (the filmmaker and the people in the play) and the true artistic conception of the film.
As a “big thinker who thinks in film language”, Kieslowski constantly thinks about the spiritual dilemma and ultimate value of human beings, and explores the loneliness and anxiety of modern people. The extreme use of color is definitely one of Kieslowski’s most famous personal labels. In his works, color is not only an expression symbol, but even has irreplaceable psychological meaning and philosophical depth. Kieslowski uses colors according to the value, psychological and dramatic meanings of different hues. The colors he creates and acquires are the catharsis of the cultural atmosphere and emotions required by the film.
”Blue” is the most serious of the “Three Colors”, and has won ten international awards, including the Golden Lion Award for Best Film, Best Actress Award, and Special Photography Award at the 50th Venice Film Festival. French films are very romantic in most people’s minds, with many Cinderella dreams come true from humble backgrounds, and frequent dating and love scenes. However, “Blue” has absolutely none of these, and “Blue” has a low tone from beginning to end, which is stifling. But in this extreme dullness, there is a main thread about “freedom”, which is very vague and appears and disappears from time to time. In the film “Blue”, the physical “field” of “blue” is isomorphic with the psychological “field” of the broad and broad concept of love of “freedom”, that is to say, color and emotion are correspondingly connected. Blue is a darker and calmer color, and the slightest pollution will destroy its perfect and ideal tranquility. These characteristics make blue have an unusual quality – melancholy and restraint.
The film tells a story: Jolie’s husband is a famous European composer, she loves him deeply and has been willingly and silently assisting her husband to complete his work. Once, Julie’s family of three went out in a car, and an unexpected accident took the lives of her husband and daughter in an instant. The cruel reality made Julie, who survived the tragedy, to die. She was teetering on the edge of life and death, not knowing why fate made such arrangements for her. In the hospital she attempted suicide but was unsuccessful. After recovering, Julie struggles to get rid of her past memories and moves to another place alone, ready for a new life of freedom. However, the shadow of her deceased husband still shrouded her life, and the unfinished European Union symphony fragment rang in her ears from time to time. Julie listened to her husband’s tunes, and the pictures of her past life with her family were vivid in her mind, and the pain always haunted her, so she threw away all her husband’s music drafts, hoping to erase all kinds of memories. By chance, a sheet music fell into the hands of her husband’s former friend Oliver. He spread the score widely in the media out of good intentions, and inadvertently told Julie the reason for the score. It turned out that the score was related to a woman. Knowing that her deceased husband had been unfaithful to her, Julie’s heart was even worse. Oliver did not expect that his kindness would bring Julie such a bad result, and he felt very guilty, so he wanted to help Julie face life again. After a long struggle, Julie finally gathered the courage and completed the composition with her husband’s assistant Oliver. From beginning to end, Julie, the heroine of the film, is faced with a choice, and choice is one of the core propositions of existential philosophy. Endless addiction. Kieslowski tries to draw attention to the freedom of love, and because of the tranquil gloom of blue, we see the heaviness and bruised freedom that penetrates into the world.
As a film exploring “freedom”, many scenes and objects in “Blue” have been given life and symbolic meanings by the director. The color style of the film is very strange, there is no blue on purpose around the blue, but almost every shot will have blue, even if some only appear in the details. Shortly in the beginning of the film, we can easily find whether it is a blue room, blue wind chimes, blue folders, blue sugar cubes and blue cellophane, blue fantasy, blue swimming pool or even blue The tonal music is closely associated with the deceased husband. From the perspective of the film as a whole, blue, to be precise, should refer to the kind of restraint or shackles that linger in my heart from time to time, a melancholy mood tone, which happens to be the opposite of “freedom”. Among them, the swimming pool has become a meaningful space for Kieslowski to portray Julie’s inner world. Kieslowski painstakingly arranged Julie in the blue world of light and shadow, struggling in the blue swimming pool. In the blue tone of the large area, the characters are completely surrounded by color, and the melancholy blue makes people feel Julie’s helplessness and despair. Light and shadow are like water. Julie always hides in a blue swimming pool when she is injured, letting the water devour her body and soul. That azure blue water is like a wave of azure melancholy, and a single body is like hitting an invisible wall. , the momentary hesitation will forcibly block the person back, no longer able to penetrate the water surface, until it sinks into the deepest – suffocation. Julie couldn’t let go of her memory, so she couldn’t be free. It’s impossible to live with your inner life. All Julie can do is live with life itself. Is love a prison or freedom? This is the question Kieslowski asks us in the solemn and great music at the end of the film. But in the end, she gained an epiphany about love and destiny, plucked up the courage to live and walked out of the huge shadow brought by her husband, and gave this redemption and forgiveness to others, and gained the freedom to choose love. In the end, she raised her love to the fraternity of life and others, not just limited to personal love. The process of liberating her personal heart from extreme pain made her relieved. The quiet tone and lines deepen the solemnity and seriousness of this process. Blue and free and melancholy love thus achieve a fit, and blue also has a kind of emotional expression.
As a non-verbal means of disseminating information, film color is even more credible than general verbal language, “because words are fixed and there are signs; meanings are ever-changing and indistinct. Fragmented, meaning is mixed. Words are limited, meaning is infinite. Expressing meaning with words is like using continuous dotted lines to transform objects, which can only be approximated.” The color of the film is mainly by some creatures that are generally recognized by human beings Because of the laws of science and physiology, the meanings expressed by the colors of the film are in an unsystematic, scattered, and even messy state, which is difficult to control by human consciousness, which is in harmony with the original “mixed” state of “meaning”.
