Details Talk--A Review on Trois Couleurs: Rouge

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    When watching movies, I tend to pay more attention to the details, for I believe every single object, appearing in a certain place, in a certain color or number, is carefully, purposely designed by the sensitive director. It’s meant to tell something, sometimes even louder than the living actors and lines. Sensibility is one of the qualities required for a director, and undoubtedly, Kieslowski possessed plenty of that precious gift.
    Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity are respectively represented by three colors on French national flag: blue, white, and red. Red, i.e. love, integrates the other two. 「Rouge」 is the last movie directed by Kieslowski, also dominated by his permanent theme of fate. A parallel structure of content mingles three souls together: the young judge’s similar experience as the old one but a different ending.
    The first object appeared was a phone, which linked the main characters and was one of the most significant objects in this movie. Valentine, a college student taking model as a part-time job, only talked with her boyfriend through telephone, who was in UK and never showed up. Every time he called her, as long as she failed to pick up the handset immediately, he would suspect her being with another male and an argue would come after. The young judge, Auguste, knew his girlfriend, a weather report operator, through phone conversations. He called during her working time to express his love on the air. But later, the girl met another man when attending the trial of the old judge and cheated Auguste. It was because of telephone that this phone-initiated relationship finally came to an end. The old judge, the most elusive character in the movie, spent most of his retired life wiretapping phone conversations of his neighbors, which he believed were much more honest than what he had heard in the court during his career. It was a traffic accident of his shepherd dog that led Valentine into his life, while it was the touching stories from the radio that moved the young model and shortened the distance between these two souls.
    When Mr. Bell first invited the telephone, he hoped it wound make it more convenient for people to help each other, care more about each other. But the reality is, it is now the phone that makes people become more and more alien to each other. More and more people won』t pay visits to families and friends when holidays come; a convenient call would save all the troubles. Even intimate as lovers would just say 「I love you」 to the thin air without being wrapped up by passion when they face, hug, and kiss each other. One of the calls that the old judge wiretapped left a deep scar on my mind: an old lady called her daughter that there was no bread in the fridge and therefore wanted her to bring some, but the young didn』t trust the old since her mother had lied to her five times of getting heart disease. It was neither bread nor medical care that the poor, lonely old woman ever wanted. She only expected her daughter to pay more visits. But telephone lay between them, a perfect, unbreakable wall named EXCUSE between parental love and one’s responsibility for the older generation.
    The object of telephone links the three major characters in 「Rouge」, while it is the old lady, trying hard to push an empty bottle into a dustbin higher than her, that links the three movies, say 「Bleu」, 「Blanc」, and 「Rouge」, together as a series. In the former two, the characters either turned a blind eye to or distained the helpless, dedicated old lady. Only Valentine ran across the street and helped her to put the bottle in. She is the spirit of the whole movie, warm, kind, just like the color red, resembling universal love, surpasses and integrates blue and white. In a moment, when staring at the screen, I had a feeling that the old, silent lady was God, having lost his power to decide mortals』 fate since human judges now possess it. As the reliance of telephone has stolen true love and care from human, the power of a mortal judge has beaten the Almighty God to control the fate of another mortal, leaving God only the position of looking aside, helpless, sympathetic. God is only a spectator in these three movies, and in countless of other mortals』 life shows.
    The dominant color of this movie is, obviously, red. Almost every object, from the 8-meter-wide and 20-meter-high poster to tiny Accessories, is coated in red. In France, this flaming color resembles universal love, love for the wounded, pregnant shepherd dog, love for the betrayed, lonely old judge, love for the helpless old lady, and love for every living creature. And all these loves centralize in one: Valentine. Even when she was in clod color, she glittered red, warm, and love from her eyes, her smile and her spirit.
    A movie talks, not necessarily through lines, but more powerful by all its details. Kieslowski is one of the masters that have a fantastic power to employ these speechless, lifeless actors to show the precise emotions of the movie itself. The difference between a real life and a movie is that in the former one, one can』t control everything, especially those details, but in the latter one, every single detail is carefully set and tells something. A director is the God of his movie and this may be the simple reason why the occupation of a director is so attractive: the power to control everything, if not in real life, at least in the fictitious world. And the difference between a writer and a director is that the former one creates a world for the readers to imagine, while the latter one makes up a world of his own by setting every single detail down. Thus, printed words are more reader-oriented while set pictures are more director-oriented. This is the simple reason that one ought to pay more attention to the details in a movie and find out what they tell, or what the director tells behind them.