II. Trois Couleurs: Rouge

Valentine, played by Irene Jacob, is beautiful, vivacious, passionate, assertive. We want to sympathize with her. Her personality is sweetened by a certain scent of innocence that causes us to desire identification with her, to simultaneously fall in love with her.

Indeed, her supreme beauty is central to this part of Kieslowski's trilogy.

A very important moment arrives, however, in the studio where she is photographed as a model. We see her sitting there, artificial wind blowing her wet hair about her face. And at the word from the photographer -- "triste" -- her beauty is transformed by an unutterable sorrow.

Although Valentine has suffered -- her brother a heroin addict, her mother an unforgiven adulteress -- we are given the sense that she has called forth this emotion from outside -- it is borrowed, learned, used for theatrics, but perhaps without completely genuine content.

And in rushes forcefully another theme of the film: external, supernatural movements that intimately interact with the willed movements of the film's characters. An overarching wellspring of meaning and purpose -- a silent smiling whisper in which Valentine, Auguste, and the old judge participate without creating.

We humans can name sorrow, joy, fear, but we cannot know them in their full intensity at any given moment. We can, however, experience little hints of that memory of humanity, what some call the historical memory or collective memory. In my mind, this refers to God, who after all is one of us in a way none of us can be. He is more human than we are, and he is the origin of every sense. Because of this, I think, we have access to feelings that are not our own, access to at least an awareness of the depth of human feeling, desire -- due to our necessary and constant connection with him: complete dependence, our drawing of life from him. We draw everything from him.

Such a beauty illustrated in this film. The old judge reflects upon his life, his decline in sourness and cynicism grown from an experience of betrayal. And who grants him knowledge of this?

As a voyeur, he seeks knowledge to which he has no right. But none of it grants him any insight into his own condition. It is precisely through knowledge gratis that he is able to understand himself, and to love once more.

The beauty and love of the hint. God is a life-hack. I beseech you to give yourself to these films. God love you.

Irene Jacob on Rouge and Kieslowski:

The Savage

I recently shared midday meals and time with strangers during a training course near the Gulf coast in Texas that I attended for work. As the training involved a supposedly "universal" incident management program, there were individuals present from both government agencies and private industry.

On the second day, I shared lunch with one man, a trainer in operations with the army. He was stationed in the area. And soon I realized that neither of us were sitting at that table for any particular reason.

He had been in California, Louisiana, Kansas, New York. I had been in Louisiana, North Carolina -- these for birth and family, education and joy. To Texas came I for sustenance, which in this State (i.e. the U.S.A.), must come from money.

After lunch we sat in my car, waiting through the 2-hour period so irregular for us, perhaps not so for the others, who were public servants. Like me, one of his enjoyments is music in the Irish tradition. We both know of Julie Fowlis.

Yet as we sat and spoke of music -- and listened -- I could not dispel the feeling that neither of us were at all capable of interesting the other. Neither of us were at all capable of engagement, cordiality, connection.

"Yes, I know this artist you speak of. Do you know this one?" And a dry exchange ensues.

He had a humility and honesty about his eyes and speech, but perhaps the iciness of Statism or the gray sky or the cold unshakeable tool of capitalism that makes its will ever known to our fears came like a silent wave and shook our plastic & leather capsule til we were subdued and wanted escape -- not from the truth but from the reminder of the truth in a man's eyes, heart, tongue.

Here in Houston, we are all killers. On the roads, we are seldom hot and angry, just full metal coolness and murder. To every man a compensatory pick-up truck. But the object dissipates as we climb into our vehicles and the desire to inflict upon mad drivers the panic only comprehended as hatred overthrows the possibility of temporal despair. And we are all lost in the welling hell.

Once back to the plastic and leather capsule of our holes, we dive into the filtering shell that seems to be an outlet but really is a thief in saving us from saving harm.

And paradoxically, you should watch The Matrix and try with good will to see how we are hastening the loss of the human. And paradoxically I will write on, aware of the death clinging to my words unless you let them live.

I do not want the grace of doctrine. If my mind is free, but every act refutes its call to free my body, my mind is in chains.

I want not to be a slave. I do not want my fruit taken with assumed justice unless I see it's worth the price. And I cannot see it. And unlike God the United States of America merits no Mystery.

What is to become of us? What is to be done, my dear fellow slaves? Dare we raise our heads and cry to God the shame upon the heads of those who bend our noses to mirrors on the ground? Dare we cry shame upon our own heads as we bend them to the ground?

God save us and have mercy.

If I were not drawn with fear and harsh words saying I neglect responsibility, I would drop this sordid towel that mops the drops gushing from the staunched fountain. Death and love and freedom rather than ongoing.

God did not make these walls.

Will someone shoot you for saying "I am a man, and will forage for food. I am a woman, and will feed my child. I am a man, and will farm this land you leave wanton and fallow. I am a woman, and will tend this house you leave neglected"? Perhaps it is best to be shot.

Shots can not harm us as we walk through the fields, feeding a living act of God's love with grain on the Sabbath.

I would invite any and all to contemplate these shots and those rocks that come in through the window in Trois Couleurs: Rouge. See earlier post for viewing information.