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White (Three Colors Trilogy)Rating:
Release Date: 04 March, 2003 Retail Price: $19.99 OUR Price: $17.99 You SAVE: $2.00! Cast: |
White (Three Colors Trilogy) Reviews
The most under-rated of the 'Three Colours' trilogy.
'White' is a refreshing improvement on its portentous predecessor 'Blue', a dazzling tragicomedy about an impotent Polish hairdresser, Karol, who is unceremoniously divorced by his Parisian wife, thrown out onto the streets without a sou, a possport or much French. Busking on the Metro, he meets a fellow Pole, the lugubrious Mikolaj, who smuggles him back to their home country. Determined to exact revenge on his wife, Karol begins to trade very profitably on the black market.
Maybe it's because Kieslowski is back in Poland, but 'White' is a much 'lighter' film than its predecessor, not in the sense of insubstantial, but in the director's relaxing the grip of his elaborate style, allowing his effects emanate from his story, his wonderful characters and the Polish landscape overlooking the post-communist embrace of (crooked) Western capitalism. Though still glossy compared to his earlier films, the relentless striving for poetic preciosity that marred 'Blue' is checked. Perhaps the return to Poland allowed Kieslowski to make an authentically East European film, a kind of absurdist shaggy dog story, its black comedy aching with anguish. The almost-ridiculous, little-man clown-hero could have bumbled from Gogol or Kafka (or silent cinema?), rumpled, besuited, a bit roly-poly, self-important despite being victim to a fate with a very sick, humiliating sense of humour - his admiring gaze at one of the film's many pigeons ends with dirt sliming down his shirt, just before a court appearance; the bank teller who cuts his frozen credit card is suitably, bureaucratically, inexorably faceless.
The film's comic tension emerges from the disparity between the character's unintentional individuality, his being made seem eccentric because of the unfortunate things inflicted on him, and others' reaction to him; and his dehumanisation, both comically, as he is smuggled by suitcase to Poland, a devalued commodity fetish, only to be purloined by airport thieves, and, more bleakly, in the hardening of his soul as he becomes more successful at being a capitalist - the ironic message of 'White' seems to be that money and power is the key to sexual potency. Karol's natural self was deemed a social failure, so he has to play a part, even if it risks killing his soul, even if he must play a corpse, become his own ghost though he tries to assert the primacy of his body. His progress is symbolised in the film by the importance of language (translating, interpreting and misunderstanding), with epiphany only possibly with its transcendence in a physical, non-verbal communication, perhaps the human equivalent of what Kieslowski tried to do in his films, reach viewers through pure cinema.
Like 'Blue', and all his films, 'White' is structured around recurring and reconfigured imagery - birds, suitcases, glass, statues, combs, 'lucky' coins, snow etc., - but, again, because they belong to the story's world, rather than being imposed on it by a style, they seem much more effective.
'White' isn't perfect - the plot is damaged by nagging implausibilities, and the film certainly dips in the second half, but that's inevitable after the fleet comic energy preceeding it, swept along by the tango melodies of Zbigniew Preisner's score, a welcome contrast to the bombast of 'Blue', and again more rooted to place. Once again, Kieslowski's irony, his play with viewpoint and fantasy, suggests we don't take his images or plot developments at face value.
The power games we play
A story about the power games we play, it pits Karol Karol, a polish hairdresser, against his ex-wife Dominique. The story begins in France, where Dominique is on home ground and controls the situation : she begins setting fire to her own salon, getting the police on his tail. Left with nothing, Karol finds a kindred spirit and manages to smuggle himself back to Poland in a suitcase. There, he works at his father's salon and manages to get back on track.
The theme of equality, second word of the French slogan, is evident here perhaps as a statement that equality does not reflect reality, and that we are engaged constantly in a search for the upper hand, and that life is for the opportunist. This may be seen as either pessimistic or itself an opportunity, depending on your view of life.
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