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Kyzysztof Kieslowski ostensibly based his three colors trilogy on the blue, white and red of the French Flag, signifying liberty, equality and fraternity. When asked in an interview, whether the tricolor was selected for convenience, he replied, “Of course it is. The words [liberte, egalite, fraternite] are French because the money is French. If the money had been of a different nationality we would have titled the films differently, or they might have had a different cultural connotation. But the films would probably have been the same.”

He was one of the greatest craftsmen to wield the instrument of cinema but he professed a disconcerting lack of faith in the medium itself. A self-avowed pessimist, he declared that he considered the camera to be a stupid instrument, as it was unable to illuminate the inner feelings of a character as a novel could. But this didn’t hinder him from conducting a profound exploration of the philosophical ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity at the level of individuals. The outcome was his final offering, a perfectly realized trilogy, Trois Couleurs. In contrast to the overt politics of his earlier Polish work, he shifted entirely to abstractions when he started working in French. Blue was set in Paris, White in Paris and Warsaw and Red in Geneva, making this an international collaboration.But then, a masterpiece does not have a language or region.

When Kieslowski derived the Decalogue from the ten commandments, the episodes were far removed from simple morality fables. Rather, he followed his meticulously etched characters, as they faced complex moral dilemmas, finding extraordinary situations in their ordinary lives. Similarly, when I started watching Blue (Bleu), initially I tried searching for the theme in the frames and the plot. However, very soon, I gave in to the beauty of the imagery unfolding on the screen. The first scene is a sideways shot of the axle of a car running on a Paris road. We see the outstretched hand of a child holding a violet colored plastic candy wrapper, fluttering in the wind outside the window. Soon, the car crashes into a tree, with a sickening sound. As a boy fiddling around with a wooden toy waits on the roadside for a lift. Next, as the blurry images clear, we see the reflection of a doctor in a close-up of Julie’s (Juliette Binoche) eyes. He reveals to her that her husband, a renowned composer and daughter have died in the accident. Thus begins this contemplation of an individual’s search for liberation as a means of coping with a horrific personal tragedy.

Julie tries to commit suicide in the hospital, but fails. There is one and only one display of explicit sorrow on her part. While watching the funeral on a display from her hospital bed, her lips quiver in uncontrollable emotion. Afterwards, she appears to turn numb. She destroys her husband Patrice’s last incomplete concerto, which was a commission from the EU. She calls over Olivier, Patrice’s assistant. He always liked her. She sleeps with him and just as cruelly tells him to leave the next morning. She directs her lawyer to sell all her property and take care of the old gardener and housekeeper. There is a revealing scene where Julie asks the housekeeper why she is crying. The reply is, “Because you won’t”. Julie goes back to her maiden name and takes an apartment. She spends her days doing absolutely nothing. It’s almost as if she is trying to will herself out of existence. It seems a conscious decision on her part to sever all ties with her past life.

Frequently, we see the screen enveloped in bluish imagery, reflecting Julie’s mental state. There are several sequences of her swimming in the empty pool, the lights dancing on the clear water. The blue lamp hanging is the only thing she takes from her old house. Blue is scattered throughout. In the pen with which she makes corrections to Olivier’s work, in the lollipop she finds in her handbag and chews up ferociously.

Her self-imposed isolation is constantly disturbed by invasions from externalities. She becomes friendly with a stripper, Lucille, living in the same building. One night Lucille calls Julie to her club in a frantic state. It provides a peek into a contrasting world, where the rigors of daily life don’t leave much room for mourning and grief. Led by a series of coincidences, Julie discovers a secret side of her husband’s life. In reacting to the situation, she is led by her ‘goodness’ to be drawn back into the world of the living. Ironically, she does not finds her support mechanism in the freedom she was so desperately seeking. But as Kieslowski himself mentioned she discovers it in the love and feeling she was running away from.

The orchestral score by Zbigniew Preisner is in itself an essential character in the movie, shifting from melancholic to lofty. It is hinted that Julie might have played a significant role in the composition credited to Patrice. The climax is a hypnotic montage of scenes, of all the protagonists, beginning and endiong with Julie, providing apprpriate closure.

Though all three films have been photographed beautifully, Blue is the one where it is so overpowering that at some points, it threatens to take over the underlying ideas. It is a movie which needs to be watched time and again to fully appreciate it.

White (Blanc) is probably the most accessible and playful of the three. The first scene is this opens to a trunl bumping along a luggage conveyor at an airport. We don’t know the contents of it yet. White tells the story of Karol,a Polish guy, who is kicked out by his French wife, played by Julie Delpy. She not only divorces him but also puts the cops on his tail. There’s a reason for it. He’s turned impotent. He manages to make his way back to Warsaw from Paris. He abandons his profession of a hairdresser. With a bit of luck and a some shrewd planning, he turns rich within a few years. Then he uses his new found power to get back at his wife through a devious plot. she ends up in prison. In the last scene he watches her inside her cell. From behind the barred windows, she also sees him and gestures thzt she is ready to re-marry him. We realize that he never stopped loving her. More surprisingly, neither did she.

Karol is humiliated. And he’s determined never to be in the same situation again. He wants to be equal, in fact more equal than others. And white is the color chosen to portray this struggle for equality. Like in Blue, white is all-pervasive here. From the snow-clad environs of Warsaw to the radiant memories of his wedding day, everything is bathed in bright white. Towards the end, when Karol has regained his sexual prowess, Julie Delpy’s orgasm also fades to a white screen.

This movie does not the emotional intricacies of Blue. Probably, it is due to a greater stress on action rather than internal drama. But it is a strong, solid movie, with dark wit and some subtle commentary on human motivations.

The last one in the trilogy is Red (Rouge). It is the one which provides closure and links together the three features in one bold stroke. It begins with an unusual sequence. Someone is making a call. The signal travels through cables under the house, below the ground, enter into the sea and finally end up on a switchboard…where a busy red light flashes. During the movie, we meet a retired judge who listens in on his neighbor’s phone conversations. Valentine, a young model hits the judge’s dog Rita. She takes Rita back to her owner. In the process, she makes her acquaintance with the bitter, cynical judge and stumbles upon his pastime. She is disgusted. The judge tells her that she can go and tell any of the neighbors. She does go to a neighboring house, where the husband is talking on the phone with his secret gay lover. She meets the loving wife. She sees the little daughter listening in on the conversation with no apparent reaction. She is unable to tell them.

A bond develops between Valentine and the judge. Whereas the judge has isolated himself by choice, Valentine is lonely as she waits for her boyfriend to return from an overseas trip. A parallel thread is about a young man Auguste, who is studying to be a judge and is in love with an older woman. He lives across the street from Valentine. And his girlfriend lives near the Judge’s house. The judge narrates the story of the one betrayal which altered his life. He ends by telling Valentine, that proabaly she is the woman he never met. And already we have seen this exact story being played out in young Auguste’s life. But will Valentine ever meet him? With Kieslowski’s love for chance and fate, you can be sure she does. The movie ends with a disaster on a grand scale which finally brings everything together, literally and metaphorically.

What does the Red in this movie stand for? It has been used to depict themes ranging from unbridled passion to decay and death. Here, it might represent the externalities and possibilities arising from the meetings between Valentine and the judge. As in Blue, here also compassion and affection seep into the judge’s life through Valentine’s naive but sunny persona. It happens through a weird kind of fraternity, where two souls just find that they have a lot to give to each other.

In all three of the movies, there’s a shot of a stooped old woman struggling to push a bottle into a trash can. It might stand for the inevitable infirmity and helplessness of old age. But this same view can mean different things for Julie, Karol and Valentine. Julie doesn’t even see the woman as she is entranced by the music of the itinerant flute player. She doesn’t see it coming. Karol sees someone worse off than him while Valentine sees a poor lady who needs help.

All three movies share common ideas of desolation, detachment and alienation. The proceedings are gloomy but the ending is hopeful. Kieslowski’s work is characterized by a strict overarching structure, with the preponderance of chance. But within the confines, of this, he provides tremendous freedom for his characters to act. He does play God, but not an omnipotent one. The difference here is crucial, as it transforms the trilogy from being a mere gimmick to a humane study of real people.