In the third and final film of his celebrated TROIS COULEURS trilogy, Krzysztof Kieslowski demonstrates how all persons, whether they know it or not, are connected by a principle of universal 'fraternité.' Just as THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE (1991) had dealt with the parallel lives of two identical women on either side of the Iron Curtain, RED deals with the parallel lives of an old man and a young man. An elderly retired judge, Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant), spends his days spying and eavesdropping on his neighbors with an arsenal of surveillance equipment. His malaise and dissatisfaction with life is the result of a divided spirit that is, either in whole or in part, restored by his Platonic relationship with a young French fashion model, Valentine (Irène Jacob). The film's general themes seem somewhat analogous to those in Bernardo Bertolucci and Alberto Moravia's THE CONFORMIST (1970), which also starred Trintignant, and used chronological dislocations of life experience to mirror the protagonist's dislocation of identity, offering them as pieces in the psychological puzzle of how a man comes to be what he is.
Kern's inability to reconcile with his past and get on with his present life may be a metaphor for the inability of Europe as a whole to deal with its history since World War II and confront its current situation. Similarly, his need for distractions and deliberate sublimation of personal guilt and disappointment in an obsessive voyeuristic interest with the lives of those around him may also be a reflection of how modern communications technology has altered human behavior and ways in which people perceive themselves and the world around him. Historically, it may express Wim Wenders' view that `the Americans have colonized our subconscious' as well as the broader phenomena of an effective colonization of people's lives by those of people whom they have never met through the omnipresence and pervasiveness of mass media. And so, Marshall McLuhan's 'global village' has resulted in a concomitant alienation of the individual from his fellows and of the individual from his sense of sovereign identity.
The catalyst in Kern's life is, of course, Valentine. Like Goethe's Faust, Kern ultimately abandons the pursuit of forbidden knowledge for the redeeming love of a woman. Her name, Valentine, connotes love and human companionship and, throughout the course of the film, that is what she offers him. Indeed, her life is perhaps even more of a mystery than Kern's, perhaps because she is still young and has not acquired enough of a personal history yet. Valentine's problem is that she does not have an autonomous identity of her own. As a fashion and advertising model, she is required to project to others an image of their own narcissism.
Valentine's growing self-awareness is measured in the images she constantly sees of herself like the fashion-layout photographs and the billboard. However, these are not 'true images' of herself in the sense that they have been determined by the will of others. Her increased fascination with her own face as reflected in car windows signalizes an internal change. And in the end, the artfully constructed mirror image of herself in the billboard -- an encounter with her conscious self and her double -- becomes transformed into an actual image of herself as she really is in a real-life situation by the final shot of the film. She has evolved from her former passive status as an opaque photographic object to a new serene kind of subjectivity and solipsism.
This is all well and fine but Kieslowski's film is not entirely convincing. Indeed, RED and the whole TROIS COULEURS trilogy qualifies as one of the most blindly overrated film experiments to come out of Europe in recent memory (but then again, look at the ecstatic reception some of those mediocre-to-gawdawful Dogme 95 films are getting these days). His Felliniesque emphasis on man's spiritual life is intriguing but the overreliance on 'fate' or 'chance' as the determining factor in the characters' lives - as the mysterious force that ultimately brings everyone together -- seems vague and facile. Consequently, the narrative often feels contrived and opportunistic - it just doesn't sit right and you get the impression that Kieslowski is cheating with the story, that he is groping for some kind of fuzzy-headed New Age revelation that he hasn't properly earned. It's a seductive con at first but the dialogue, particularly Trintignant's, is full of quasi-cryptic, pseudo-profound banalities (e.g., `Perhaps you were the woman I never met.') that come across as merely pompous and half-heartedly nondescript attempts at gnomic wisdom. And while Kieslowski is no doubt a master visual stylist, I am rather suspicious of his rather monotonous and all-too-obvious use of filtered light to create an atmosphere of supposed inner awareness and expectancy. His images aren't really any more interesting or meaningful than the fashion layouts and chewing gum advertisements he seems to be obliquely criticizing. As Pauline Kael once asked, `do symbols plus pretty pictures equal art?'
Kern's inability to reconcile with his past and get on with his present life may be a metaphor for the inability of Europe as a whole to deal with its history since World War II and confront its current situation. Similarly, his need for distractions and deliberate sublimation of personal guilt and disappointment in an obsessive voyeuristic interest with the lives of those around him may also be a reflection of how modern communications technology has altered human behavior and ways in which people perceive themselves and the world around him. Historically, it may express Wim Wenders' view that `the Americans have colonized our subconscious' as well as the broader phenomena of an effective colonization of people's lives by those of people whom they have never met through the omnipresence and pervasiveness of mass media. And so, Marshall McLuhan's 'global village' has resulted in a concomitant alienation of the individual from his fellows and of the individual from his sense of sovereign identity.
The catalyst in Kern's life is, of course, Valentine. Like Goethe's Faust, Kern ultimately abandons the pursuit of forbidden knowledge for the redeeming love of a woman. Her name, Valentine, connotes love and human companionship and, throughout the course of the film, that is what she offers him. Indeed, her life is perhaps even more of a mystery than Kern's, perhaps because she is still young and has not acquired enough of a personal history yet. Valentine's problem is that she does not have an autonomous identity of her own. As a fashion and advertising model, she is required to project to others an image of their own narcissism.
Valentine's growing self-awareness is measured in the images she constantly sees of herself like the fashion-layout photographs and the billboard. However, these are not 'true images' of herself in the sense that they have been determined by the will of others. Her increased fascination with her own face as reflected in car windows signalizes an internal change. And in the end, the artfully constructed mirror image of herself in the billboard -- an encounter with her conscious self and her double -- becomes transformed into an actual image of herself as she really is in a real-life situation by the final shot of the film. She has evolved from her former passive status as an opaque photographic object to a new serene kind of subjectivity and solipsism.
This is all well and fine but Kieslowski's film is not entirely convincing. Indeed, RED and the whole TROIS COULEURS trilogy qualifies as one of the most blindly overrated film experiments to come out of Europe in recent memory (but then again, look at the ecstatic reception some of those mediocre-to-gawdawful Dogme 95 films are getting these days). His Felliniesque emphasis on man's spiritual life is intriguing but the overreliance on 'fate' or 'chance' as the determining factor in the characters' lives - as the mysterious force that ultimately brings everyone together -- seems vague and facile. Consequently, the narrative often feels contrived and opportunistic - it just doesn't sit right and you get the impression that Kieslowski is cheating with the story, that he is groping for some kind of fuzzy-headed New Age revelation that he hasn't properly earned. It's a seductive con at first but the dialogue, particularly Trintignant's, is full of quasi-cryptic, pseudo-profound banalities (e.g., `Perhaps you were the woman I never met.') that come across as merely pompous and half-heartedly nondescript attempts at gnomic wisdom. And while Kieslowski is no doubt a master visual stylist, I am rather suspicious of his rather monotonous and all-too-obvious use of filtered light to create an atmosphere of supposed inner awareness and expectancy. His images aren't really any more interesting or meaningful than the fashion layouts and chewing gum advertisements he seems to be obliquely criticizing. As Pauline Kael once asked, `do symbols plus pretty pictures equal art?'