Chapter 6 Part Two: The Double Life of Veronica (6-8)

However, Alexander's love for Veronica ultimately involves using her, and perhaps this makes sense for Kieslowski.She worried that Alexander's interest in her had been planned for a long time, and she came only for his book, so she ran away from the train station. [6] But he manages to convince her that this is not the case, and in the final scene between the two we find that he has indeed made a puppet in Veronica's Somebody's Double Life" text.Like Kieslowski, he dates the birth of his two women to 1966, and he also details the early connection between the two little girls: for example, One burned himself, the other instinctively avoided the flames.While he's a seductive agent—perhaps an evolved soul—he's ultimately abandoned by Veronica, who senses his access to her life is only for his own creation.Kieslowski seems to be here to question the connection between genius, love, opportunism, and perhaps the guilt of a storyteller who uses real life in his art.

Graphically, these reflections are rooted in the film's use of mirrors. The magnifying lens in front of the eye in "France, 1968" and behind the round frames of his glasses in the scene introducing Veronika's father in Poland; Veronika talking to him , reflecting itself in the window pane.When she took the train to Krakow, we first saw the slightly distorted roadside scenery through the window glass, and then this scenery was refracted from the glass ball.In Krakow, Veronica appears in a mirror while on the phone and in the window glass of a bus.Her funeral was filmed from inside a glass-covered coffin: swirls of dirt were thrown and her vision gradually blurred.

In France, when Veronica watched Alexander's performance, she did not look directly from the audience, but looked at him in the mirror from the side.Later, when she was looking for Alexander's previous works, her own figure also appeared in the window glass of the bookstore.The next shot shows a mysterious cup of teabag, with the teabags dancing up and down in the cup (unlike Kieslowski's heroines in previous works, Veronica doesn't let the cup fall) .She uses a magnifying glass to examine the postage stamp on the package (reminiscent of the magnifying glass Veronique used as a child at the beginning of the film), which contains the cassette made at the Gare Saint-Lazare.At the station, she appeared behind the revolving glass doors of the coffee shop, reflecting the table where Alexander sat. (Through the window next to him, we can see the wrecked car: the sound of crashes and ambulances on the tape suggests that there has been death here.) Finally, in the final shot of the film, we see Veroni from the window. Ka hugs his father, and the two appear on both the left and the right of the screen!Rather than expressing a mirroring relationship, this picture reflects a parallel relationship, implying that the two daughters embrace their respective fathers.

It is worth noting that Kieslowski added the current ending for American audiences after the film's national premiere at the New York Film Festival.As Harvey Weinstein, then chairman of Miramax Corporation, the U.S. distributor of The Double Life of Veronica, recalled in an interview with Premiere magazine Kieslowski did this to make the end of the film clearer and easier to understand: "We sat in the hotel room, and Krzysztof drew a group of mirror pictures on the white paper of the hotel, and then It was the changes he wanted to make to the ending. We got film from Poland and made them with Krzysztof's storyboards."[7] The last scene in the French version, showing only Veronique Put your hand on the big tree in front of your father's house.Kieslowski also considered some other endings, including the French Veronica running to Krakow and seeing a third self.The film was shown in seventeen cinemas in Paris at the time, and he even thought about shooting seventeen different versions of the ending and showing them in these theaters at the same time!As he said in an interview with "Television Expo" magazine: "If I do that, I will prepare multiple reels of each version for screening. I am very serious about this, but unfortunately I don't have enough time to realize it. If that can be done, I believe that the audience will enjoy as much fun as I do." [8] Further assuming that if he makes eight or nine versions of other films, then "Veronica's Double" "Life" requires 20 shots, "because the theme of this movie is very tricky and delicate" [9].

After a plethora of upside-down scenes, both versions now end with a sense of vertical solidity.Together with her father, Veronica stood upright by the tree, reminiscent of the "compass in the heart" that Kieslowski repeatedly mentioned, it can clearly point you in the right direction.But recreating the image of the two embracing — as in the final shot at the end of "Never Ending," in which Ursula and her husband's ghost slowly walk away from behind a window — requires a "double take" on the viewer's part. : The ambiguity of what we see makes it as good as the beginning of the film.

The first frame at the beginning of the film is an inversion of the horizontal plane - Veronica Poland is upside down looking at the sky - where Kieslowski adds small transparent plastic balls (reminiscent of "Love Short Film"). Circular reflector on Magda's window): Plastic balls have appeared in Poland and France, and there is an upside-down church in the ball.When the Polish Veronica passed out on stage, the picture appeared 180 degrees upside down.In addition, in the sex scene between Veronica and Alexander in France, there is also such a picture reversal: she wakes up on the hotel bed, and Alexander leans down in front of her from the opposite direction, and then kisses her.When the two made love to the climax, the camera lens reversed from the position of Alexander just now, and shot down her excited expression: at this moment, we are looking at the French Veronica in the same way that the Polish Veronica sees heaven.Similarly, Kieslowski often chooses to shoot heroines from a 45-degree angle: Polish Veronica talks to her aunt in Krakow, and when she falls to the ground in a heartache, the camera is at a 45-degree angle. Down shot. (Curiously, after she falls to the ground, we see a well-dressed man pass by him from her inverted perspective, and he suddenly reveals himself!)

In one of the film's memorable pivotal scenes, French Veronica also tilts her head: she takes a nap in the attic, awakened by the golden light streaming in through the windows.She got up and looked for the source of the light.She noticed the little boy playing with the mirror in the opposite building. Like her, we thought it was the little boy playing with the reflection of the mirror.But now, just after she closed the window and turned around, the golden light continued to appear in her room, the light was as beautiful as the soundtrack, and it was inexplicable.The soundtrack of the film originally came from within the scope of the plot, and we can find its source from the story and the characters: the singing that accompanied the opening subtitles was sung by Veronica from Poland in the torrential rain.But then the sound of the music becomes more and more mysterious, and it runs through the whole film, like a magical sound thread, connecting the two girls together, summoning some mysterious unseen force to work.The way the aforementioned scene ends is also fitting: a mysterious light leads Veronica to the rope attached to her music clip.

In class, French Veronica told the students that the music was written two hundred years ago by the Dutch composer van den Budenmeyer (whose name appears on the blackboard), and that the Ten Commandments, Nine , Kieslowski made a joke with the audience.The children struggled to perform this piece of music on their respective instruments, which is exactly what Veronica Poland sang before she died.Alexander was listening out the window, which explains why he played the recording of the Polish Veronika's swan swan song on the phone to the French Veronika: because he knew it was familiar to the French teacher.

The lyrics to accompany the piece are Dante's Old Italian verse, which was Pressner's own idea. "The Double Life of Veronica" (originally titled "The Choir Girl") begins with a core melody played on flutes, and then a chorus is introduced as the opening credits appear.When Veronica Poland accompanies her friends to music rehearsals, the soundtrack is further integrated into the plot: she volunteers to sing beautifully along with the male singers on stage.The female conductor on the stage introduces her to the orchestra conductor (Alexander Bartini) who is in charge of the singing competition, and they discover their star, the music of Van den Buden Meyer or Pressner and her The singing voices complement each other so well.It is worth noting the symphony orchestra in the concert scene: there are two female soloists on stage, and Veronica's voice is harmoniously woven into this corresponding singing.Against the background of the symphony, their singing is beautiful and moving under the background of the orchestra-perhaps also suggesting that a soul is quietly leaving.

Piecivic said of the film's score at a Paris seminar in 1997: "We wanted to make a film about nostalgia, about its mystery—the longing for love, for art, for intimacy." The music that Pressner made for this film also paved the way for "Blue": the music he wrote was not only sung by Veronica Poland, but also became a symbol of her after her death.In Kieslowski's next work, the music again reminds us of the heroine's double—or, rather, the heroine's rebirth—that of her past self.