Chapter 7 The second part three colors: red (1～5)

Chapter 27: Three Colors: Red (1) Three colors: red If fraternity can be defined as an intimate relationship with one's neighbor, "Red" is certainly a movie about fraternity bonds: in this ironically interpreted story by Kieslowski, the main character is a thief. A retired judge (played by Jean-Louis Trantignan) who listens to his neighbors' calls.But at the heart of the story of "Red" is the developing bond between a stubborn judge and a beautiful young model Valentina (Hélène Jacob), a student at the University of Geneva.In today's society, is friendship still possible between a man and a woman?Maybe, and at least in this deeply humanitarian story, written by Kieslowski and Pieciewicz, the answer is yes.

Piotr Sobochinski (who was also the cinematographer of "The Ten Commandments, Three" and "The Ten Commandments, Nine"), later also had success in the United States, shooting such as Ron Howard's "Ransom Storm", Robert Benn Dayton's "At Dawn" and other films) photography is an indispensable part of the film's story, because "Red" establishes the whole film's structure through internal echoes and parallel relationships.It replaces linear structures with complex mappings, accentuated from time to time by recurring images—including telephones, cars, flashing lights, red liquids—that suggest both the desire for contact and the fear of such intimacy. .The bolero written by Pressner also brings a perfect complement in the ear: the melodic and lyrical theme passages are constantly developed and repeated, and the structure of the melody itself also shows the cumulative resonance characteristics of "Red".

From the very beginning of the film, Valentina and her neighbor Auguste (Jean-Pierre Lorit) almost meet—and always come close—even though the camera often Viewers bond the two together.Enthusiastic and cheerful, Valentina has a boyfriend who never shows up, and he is always just a jealous male voice on the long-distance call.August, on the other hand, has a girlfriend, Karin (Frederique Feder), who is about to take the bar exam.Valentina accidentally ran over a puppy "Rita" while driving. She put the injured puppy in the car and drove it to its owner, the retired judge.But he was very indifferent to the puppy, and Valentina had to take Rita back to her home to take care of her.

Chapter 28: Three Colors: Red (2) After recovering, Rita ran back to her master's house, and Valentina followed: she was angry and shocked to find the judge's listening device, which he had obviously left her on purpose.She cried, and the judge wrote letters to the victim's neighbors and the police, denouncing herself. Although his name does not appear in the end credits, when he appeared in court as a defendant, we heard the court refer to the defendant in the case as "Joseph Cohen" (the name of the coffee shop near where Valentina and August lived. It is "Joseph's house", which is obviously not just a coincidence).Valentina read about the invasion of privacy in the newspapers, and hurried to the judge's house to tell him that she hadn't made the whistleblower.Like Alexander in "The Double Life of Veronica," he tells Valentina that he has exposed himself, just to see what she will do next.Their subsequent conversation re-established their rapport, and the judge encouraged her to take a steamer on her trip to England.Did he know that the latter would be on the same boat because he had eavesdropped on August's phone call?At least he does know that Karin, who already has a new love, will also take this boat.August is proud in the examination room, but frustrated in love. (He sneaks up Karin's window and sees her having sex with someone else, like Tomek in "Love Short Films", Roman in "Ten Commandments, Nine", Carlo in "White": the more afraid of what The more you peek at something.)

Valentina was going to walk the catwalk at the fashion show, and the judge accepted her invitation. After the show, the two had a frank exchange on the empty stage.Originally, he was the one who knew everyone's stories, but now, she began to guess his own.As Valentina recounts the judge's past, it becomes increasingly clear how similar he is to the current August: the judge was also abandoned by a blond woman two years his senior when he was young .In the previous scene, August’s book fell to the floor, and the question written on the opened page was exactly what he encountered in the next exam. Many years ago, the judge also encountered the same thing. It landed on the ground, and the opened page had exactly the question he would be asked the next day.The judge calmly told Valentina: "Maybe you are the woman I didn't meet."

Finally, August meets her in the final scene of the film: the judge watches a news report on TV, the ship is shipwrecked, and only a few survivors remain, August and Valentina appear in the in the same screen.Other survivors include Julie and Olivier in "Blue" and Carlo and Dominique in "White".The story of the trilogy took exactly one year from start to finish: because the news mentioned the composer Patrice who died a year earlier. Chapter 29: Three Colors: Red (3) The opening subtitles of "Red" also continued the style of "Blue" and "White", setting the tone for the whole film in terms of theme and style.Again the sound precedes the picture, and we hear a rumble, which we later discover is also a mechanism: the opening mechanism in "Blue" is a wheel, in "White" it's a conveyor belt, and in "Red" it's a A phone dialed by a finger. (Looking closely, we can see that Valentina is in the photo next to the phone, and it is her boyfriend Michelle on the phone. First we hear the rain, and then we hear Michelle say: "Typical British weather, pouring Heavy rain.”) Next, the camera lens begins a series of exciting continuous movements, it first pans to the left suddenly, follows the telephone line all the way, and then enters the pipeline: it shuttles under the water, and we hear distorted voices and words, which are exactly human The technical pathway that the spirit had to go through in the 1990s.A circular light flashes, accompanied by a beep: busy tone.Then redialed and this time the call went through. "Redial" could be used as the subtitle of "Red": The old judge gets a second chance in life, and finds his lost humanity through Valentina; Valentina also gets a second chance in life — whether by fate, God, or the magician Judge — she survives the shipwreck and is "reborn" with a younger version of August as Judge.

The opening scene of "Red" introduces several key elements of the film, from the telephone (or listening) to the omnipresent camera, from the criss-crossing wires (or lost connections) to opportunity.To a judge, a telephone is like a radio, used more for listening than speaking into it.He and Valentina never called each other, she came to see him at his house, and he went to see her play after receiving the invitation.For August, who didn't have an answering machine at home, the phone always caused trouble: He missed Karin's call at a critical moment and got a busy signal when he called back.For Karin, the phone is her life tool, and she provides customers with weather information in various places through the phone.For Valentina, the phone was a source of frustration: every time Michelle called, he berated her for not answering the phone the last time.In fact, the jealous boyfriend seemed to be watching her all the time, and he could sense that Valentina could have picked up the phone sooner.

Chapter 30: Three Colors: Red (4) Since the audience first comes into contact with "Red" through Valentina's conversation on the phone with her unseen boyfriend, we have the same relationship to Michelle that the judge has to everyone—overhearing.But we weren't the only ones eavesdropping: The judge challenged Valentina to go to a neighbor's house and tell the married man that the judge had overheard a conversation with his same-sex lover; Went there, only to find the man's daughter listening to his father's call at another extension. Graceful, deliberate camera movements suggest a kind of benign surveillance.Like the judge, the camera seems to be able to see the actions of each character at the same time.For example, before Valentina grabs the phone, there is August in his apartment.He's on the phone too—earlier than scripted—and has a quick, mysterious kiss on the phone.The ringing of the phone takes the picture out of his room - past the red roof of the "Joseph's" coffee shop - and into Valentina's room through the window.The camera waits for the heroine to enter the picture: we hear her voice on the answering machine, and the rocking of the red rocking chair suggests that she was there before. (When she runs into the frame and grabs the phone, the viewer feels as much relief as the caller.) The camera has an omniscient life of its own, as when, after Valentina leaves, it seems to automatically turned back to the judge.Or on the bowling lane, where not only does it follow a bowling ball about to knock over pins, but it also moves left from Valentina, picking up a shattered cup and a crumpled packet of Marlboros.We already know that August, who smokes Marlboro, originally arranged to meet Karin at the bowling alley, and the above-mentioned camera movement indirectly tells us that Karin will not come. (The shattered glass also visually echoes the crushed coffee mug in Valentina's final scene with the judge.) When the judge describes to Valentina how he wrote letters to his neighbors , the camera pans left again—silently, self-awarely, with ambiguous purpose—up to a glass bottle in another room, before panning back again.When the two met for the last time in the theater, the judge told Valentina that her book had fallen from the second floor, and the page she opened happened to contain the exam questions that would appear in the next exam. At this time, the camera seemed to instinctively look down Slanted, as if imitating the falling of a book. [1]

Chapter 31: Three Colors: Red (5) Is it a coincidence that the book just turns to this page?August's book also fell down, and it happened to turn to the page with the exam questions he would encounter in the future. Is this a coincidence?In Kieslowski's poetic world of intersections, perhaps not.Valentina asked Michele if they would have met if she hadn't gone out to rest for a while.Later, she walked into the coffee shop and played a game of slot machines as usual.The judge let her listen to a conversation between August and Karin, who used a coin toss to decide whether to go bowling: Karin and the judge flipped coins at the same time, both tails.The judge's smile suggested that so-called coincidences were really just fate in disguise.

The complex movement of the camera, combined with the use of red, presents a world where everything is preordained and chance is of little use.Kieslowski uses the term "reverse inference" (using what happened later to reason about what happened before) to describe the recurring occurrence of certain imagery in the film, in the words of Piotr Sobochinski In other words: Of course, there is no storyboard for these, and some are just things that can be associated, but its meaning must be hidden, not revealed... After clarifying a series of objects that can elicit slight associations, we will use the usual movie logic turned upside down.Usually the foreshadowing precedes something that happens in the future, but we emphasize those that happen later in order to show that some of the apparently accidental things that happened earlier are actually important to the story as a whole. [2]

For example, at the beginning of the film, the circular flashing light bulb establishes the concept of light as a movement, which is gradually developed throughout the film.Valentina watched the flashing headlights through the window as her car parked downstairs sounded its siren.When August, furious at seeing Karin betray him, parks his red Jeep under Valentina's window, she notices that the car's battery is dying.On her second visit to the judge, he stopped mid-sentence to remind her of the light: it was about to light up the room.On her third visit to the judge, the two talked in the dim light until he switched on a lamp; install.