Krzysztof Kieślowski, Poland, France, Switzerland, 1993
Comment
Julie has lost her child and her husband, a famous composer, in a car accident. In order to rebuild her life, she has decided to break all ties with her past. At the beginning of the extract, prostrate in front of her desk, in a cold-toned room plunged into semi-darkness, she seems frozen like a statue. Suddenly she grabs the phone: at the end of the line, a friend of her husband's who helped her at the very beginning of her mourning and became, for one night, her lover; before she disappeared. The firm and reassuring voice of the lover invades the whole space of the room and the whole sound field, the spectator immediately enters the intimate connection with Julie. Her finger touches some sheet music, which she begins to read, it is a piece by her husband, an unfinished concerto. Immediately, as her finger touches the score, the music of the concerto resounds, a chorus whose singing rises to the rhythm of the camera, which slowly rises and literally floats above the scene: Julie rises and disappears behind the blue chandelier, the only object she had kept from her former life, and whose diffuse colour soon invades the screen. The emotion caused by this abstract vision (the chandelier is not identifiable, it appears as a diffuse halo) and the music, which covers the entire sequence, and whose source is external to what the character can experience or hear, operates a disconnection from the narrative: the sensations are directly addressed to the viewer. The powerful singing of the choir resounds while the viewer is plunged into darkness, over the course of a fade, during which Julie joins the man. The next shot is a close-up of Julie, who is making love to her lover, crying. The flight initiated by the piece of music unifies the whole sequence, while the character is shifting into another life. The viewer, who has accompanied the character throughout the film, witnesses Julie's rise and final liberation from her grief.
Comment
Julie has lost her child and her husband, a famous composer, in a car accident. In order to rebuild her life, she has decided to break all ties with her past. At the beginning of the extract, prostrate in front of her desk, in a cold-toned room plunged into semi-darkness, she seems frozen like a statue. Suddenly she grabs the phone: at the end of the line, a friend of her husband's who helped her at the very beginning of her mourning and became, for one night, her lover; before she disappeared. The firm and reassuring voice of the lover invades the whole space of the room and the whole sound field, the spectator immediately enters the intimate connection with Julie. Her finger touches some sheet music, which she begins to read, it is a piece by her husband, an unfinished concerto. Immediately, as her finger touches the score, the music of the concerto resounds, a chorus whose singing rises to the rhythm of the camera, which slowly rises and literally floats above the scene: Julie rises and disappears behind the blue chandelier, the only object she had kept from her former life, and whose diffuse colour soon invades the screen. The emotion caused by this abstract vision (the chandelier is not identifiable, it appears as a diffuse halo) and the music, which covers the entire sequence, and whose source is external to what the character can experience or hear, operates a disconnection from the narrative: the sensations are directly addressed to the viewer. The powerful singing of the choir resounds while the viewer is plunged into darkness, over the course of a fade, during which Julie joins the man. The next shot is a close-up of Julie, who is making love to her lover, crying. The flight initiated by the piece of music unifies the whole sequence, while the character is shifting into another life. The viewer, who has accompanied the character throughout the film, witnesses Julie's rise and final liberation from her grief.