An iconic image in the making.

Blood

If I keep pushing people away someday I may turn around and find myself completely alone.

My petlings have been irritating me to the breaking point. Finally decided to give them a seperate room all to themselves. Merry Christmas to one and all!

Reflections on Krzystof Kieslowski’s Blue

I have watched Blue repeatedly over the years. I have never gotten tired of it and remain fascinated by its enigmatic storyline. I recognize something of myself in the film’s main character. A part of me thinks I understand the story yet I remain baffled by it. As I have mentioned before, I only love something if I don’t completely understand it. The same logic can be applied to love and life.
Blue is remarkable for its innovative use of music, lights and camera work to suggest mood and idea. It’s great art and the cinematography is a language all its own.

The plot is often bizarre, but it’s the decisions made by the central character of Julie de Courcy (played by Juliette Binoche) that continues to bewitch me. Kieslowski is a gifted director and ‘Blue’ is undoubtedly his masterpiece, a testament to his knowledge of human psychology, his deep wisdom and his innovative gifts as a film director.

The story seems simple enough from the outset: a woman married to a famous composer sets off for the road one day with their daughter. Alas, tragedy strikes and their car rams into a tree. The woman loses her husband and daughter—all that she loves and holds dear—in an instant. Regaining consciousness after a brief coma, she is informed that they are gone. After failing in her half-hearted attempt at suicide, she makes a highly unusual decision: to rid herself of everything that represents her old life (friends, material things, memories, love, art), everything that has caused her to feel pain and live a new life of denial. A sort of non-existence. As she explains later in the film to her senile mother, everything crucial to happiness can disappear in an instant, so to protect herself she rejects these things.

The viewer is confronted with one of the enigmas that drive the plot of this film: is Julie’s choice to reject her past an expression of her desire for freedom or is it in essence a denial of freedom? By isolating herself from the world that continues to make demands from her, does she not become a prisoner of this isolation? She sleeps with one of her dead husband’s colleagues, Olivier (played by Benoit Regent) a man who has long been attracted to her in order to make it plain to him that she is not really all that desirable (or is this just a ruse to get to know him carnally before she disappears forever?) She moves to a nondescript part of town where she concentrates her energies in doing nothing.

The film does not give us an interior monologue; Julie’s motivations are sometimes shrouded in darkness. The movie has several mysteries. I will mention one here: right before Julie leaves her old home forever, after getting rid of all her old possessions (even money and property), she goes up to her daughter’s old room to retrieve a kind of over-hanging decoration of colored blue pebbles. Why? We never find out. The blue tone of the pebbles is reflected on her face when she examines it, a sort of aura; a reflection of her inner-world. She hangs this decorative piece in her new apartment yet damages a part of it almost as a form of accusation.

As the film progresses Julie meets new people and Olivier comes back to haunt her- threatening to finish a symphonic score her husband had been composing before his death for the unification of Europe. She is enraged. It is suggested that much of her dead husband’s brilliant music may have been composed in collaboration with him or perhaps even entirely by her, though she never takes credit and the matter is never fully clarified. Later on, by chance she discovers that her husband had been having an affair with another woman- a lawyer - and this event helps bring about her healing. She begins to accept Olivier which in turn enables her to help him finish the score. The irony is, it is only when she confronts the past does she truly become free of it, enabling her to move on. This is a lesson people can apply to their lives.

What was Kieslowski trying to tell us in this film? In his films there appears to be very little coincidence or meaningless chance. Everything is fate, synchronicity and serendipity. He speaks of duality, of the past and future and present sometimes converging. He hints of the Grand Design that governs the universe. In one unforgettable scene, Julie, who often spends time in a neighborhood café, hears a street musician play a melody that sounds eerily like a passage from her dead husband’s symphony. Coincidence? When Kieslowski was asked about this scene, he said it was done to suggest that all music exists somewhere in the universe in a coherent form and it is our jobs as human beings to ‘receive’ it. Poets take notice.
Juliette Binoche as Julie de Courcy is simply brilliant in this film. Her transformation into this reticent and difficult woman is highly believable. Kudos as well to Zbigniew Preisner for the powerful film score.

Chagrin

A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance or embarrassment, caused by failure, disappointment, or a disconcerting event: To her chagrin, the party ended just as she arrived.

from answers

Garrotte

Because I’m slowly dying…..

I live my life vicariously
I post pictures from shadowy photo albums, torn sheets from love letters
I collect the blood secreted by broken hearts (but never my own)

I rub it on the barren dunes of my body and hope
It induces flowers

Because I am can’t remember my own name or age
I leave the television on all day and never bring the laundry in
I never throw garbage away since I believe everything is a precious gift

I am the real trash stinking up this universe,
This taffeta skirt of pain

Because I am on a train heading south
I travel light and sexy
I suppress my penis hoping the boys don’t notice
When I ogle them from the corner of my lazy eye

I haven’t touched myself
While thinking about him in a long time
I’ve also kicked my addiction to internet pornography

Because I am a shutter that filters out every color but blue
I am attracted to women who own dresses in
Garish tones of bright red and orange

I shred their dresses when they’re busy making tea for
Me and pretend
A passing troupe of mice had been the culprits

I envy statuesque women
To my chagrin

Because I am a flock of birds perched on telephone poles
While you try to make your calls,
I fantasize about suicide and penetration and winning an
Academy award while you try in vain
To contact your many acquaintances

I hope you never make your call
I hope nobody ever cares for you again

There are consequences to every action
And every sin is thrown back at you by the universe

HE was the wound that never properly healed. Correction, he was the wound that never healed.

MM Paris