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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1072
The premise - A man's life forks when he's attempting to board a train, and the movie traces each possible destiny from the fork. That is the plot. It's set against Communist Poland, and as such is worthwhile just for the reminder of how devastating the Soviets were to culture (and - in different ways, still are today), but it has some of Kieslowski's signatures, uncomfortably intimate moments, atmospheric, haunting.
Overall, my least favorite of his movies. Which is to say it's a damned good film by any standards, but what followed was breathtaking. If you're just discovering him maybe view the Dekalog first, then go back to the first two, then forward to the Blue, White & Red trilogy & La Double Vie de Veronique.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1108
Great, but we're going back in time now, he's a little - rawer, not as subtle, by which I mean he's still a thousand times subtler than any American equivalent, but his style is still evolving and in later films gets increasingly nuanced.
He can be brutal, too, and goes where Hollywood would never go, this, while great, would never pass a test screening, plump audiences clutching their popcorns and diet cokes, they'd hate it. It would go before a committee, get slashed to ribbons, redone, a new writer, director...yet he managed to make it in communist Poland...
There's still one more left...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1147
Each deserve their own, but I couldn't wait, watched "White" and then immediately watched "Red".
Classic Kieślowski - the small hallmarks, the overlapping of separate narratives, the recurring symbolism - the old man or woman trying to recycle a bottle, the same as in "Blue", "La double vie..", and there's this haunting feeling that I've seen it before but I can't for the life of me predict the plot. I recognize the characters from his other films, Dekalog especially, which lends the films a certain familiarity.
There is no signature style - or there is, but it's impossible to put your finger on, with Wes Anderson a single still frame will reveal the director, with Kieślowski it's the sum of all the parts. There are no surprises, no twists, yet - while the film evolves, the narrative continues in trifling understated increments you are blindsided by the ending, "White" especially hits you like a sucker punch in the stomach.
There is no - I want to say over-reaching intellect, like in Kubrick where know you are in the playground of a great mind, - but it's there, only - more subtle, it's embossed into the film, nuanced, hidden, layered and washed with color, sublime, here - the films are ordinary - ordinary - ordinary - and yet at the end there's a spiritual triumph, an awakening, it's the transformative power of art, they are - even the poorest ones by him - easily an order of magnitude above anything produced by his peers. He's the right film-maker at the right time. I appreciated him before - but now, more than ever. Small things come to mean the world and I'm dying for worthy company to discuss it with, but - well, I'm in Calgary...
"Red", stopping it, again and again, feeling it, savoring the moment, I don't want it to end...
He beguiles you with simplicity, the slowly evolving premise of existence, imbuing every moment with wonder, coincidences, symmetries, never overstated, hinting at a divine order beyond comprehension, subtle, muted, he's a master.
I did not see them, I don't think, maybe I did but not through the same eyes, everything was a surprise, ordinary lives that in the end are anything but ordinary.
The end, finally, a brief moment of familiarity, suggesting - that maybe I'd once seen it, or clips of it at least, but I'm not sure.
These are great films. See them if you like film. Even if you saw them a long time ago, indulge yourself, they reward a revisit.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1153
An old movie by a favorite director, I'm not sure that I've seen this. Ever. I'm glad I didn't, sometimes you find exactly the right thing at exactly the right time...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1016
An Errol Morris Documentary, brilliant, on the enigmatic Donald Rumsfeld, and the fiasco of the Iraqi War under George Bush. Memorable scenes include the one toward the end where the soundproofed telephone box opens onto a sea of rhetoric...
If you like documentaries, and you have a passing familiarity or interest in the history of the Iraq war, this might be for you.