"Blue" Film Diary

“Blue”, also known as “Trois couleurs: Bleu” in France was filmed in 1993 and was directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski . “Blue” is part of the “Three Colors Trilogy”. The colors of the three color trilogy are “Red”, “White”, and “Blue”. The film starts out when Julie gets in a car accident with her husband Patrice and her daughter in the car. Julie is the only one that survived the car accident. She wakes up in a hospital and attempts to commit suicide, but couldn’t go through with it. When she gets out of the hospital, she has Patrices friend Oliver go to Patrices office to clear out all of his personal belongings. Included in those personal belongings was what Patrice had written so far for his next big musical piece. The only thing Julie takes from all of her husbands things was these blue hanging beads. Olivier sleeps with Julie eventually, and strangely keeps the mattress. Oliver wanted to finish the musical piece, and Julie wanted to help him. She wanted to help him anonymously and he said that he wouldn’t let her help unless she took the credit. Oliver also brings up the fact that Patrice had a mistress who was a lawyer. She finds her and then finds out that she is pregnant with Patrices baby. Although somewhat upset to hear about the affair, she generously offers her the house that she moved out of.
There were several things worth noting about this movie. It was implied that Julie was the one who was writing all of her husbands music. Her husband Patrice was a world renowned conductor and music writer. The score that would play throughout the movie was Patrices unfinished masterpiece. The film at many times seemed to have a blue tint to it. This movie didn’t have a lot of dialogue in it. Krzysztof Kieslowski did an excellent job at letting many of his scenes speak for themselves. He did a phenomenal job of using non verbal communication. The lack of dialogue, however did make the film move slow. It didn’t move slow in the sense that I kept looking at the clock wondering when the film was going to end. It moved slow in the sense that it felt like for the most part, nothing really happened in the film. I do understand that “Blue” is an art film, but quite frankly I don’t watch a ton of art films, and maybe I just don’t “get” it. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate this film at all, I just feel like I didn’t always understand what was trying to be expressed in the film. It was by no means NEARLY as slow as “The Piano Teacher”. I also felt like the ending left too much of the story to be told. The whole film was focused around Patrices final masterpiece, and the credits started rolling and the story was left open ended and unfinished in my opinion. Visually, however, the film was beautiful. “Blue” had excellent cinematography and I think that this is why it got away with having such little dialogue. Overall, I definitely recommend watching this film and if you are a fan of art films or foreign films, you will love “Blue”.