Factfile: Gce A2 Moving Image Arts Poetic Realism in World Cinema 1

FACTFILE: GCE A2 MOVING IMAGE ARTS POETIC REALISM IN WORLD CINEMA 1

CASE STUDY: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Learning Outcomes • discuss the following elements of Poetic Realism and explain their purpose in key works by contemporary film-makers: Students should be able to: - thoughtfully composed motionless or near motionless images; • demonstrate knowledge and understanding - slow, silent explorations of spaces; of the term Poetic Realism and be able to - intense close-ups; recognise a poetic realist aesthetic in the work - visual rhymes; of key practitioners; - recurrent visual and auditory motifs; and - a meditative tone or mood of poetic reverie • identify the distinctive visual style and the or imagination; and poetic realist storytelling techniques used to explore the common place details, activities • analyse and discuss the use of poetic realist and gestures of everyday life; conventions in previously unseen sequences.

Course Content

A poetic realist aesthetic can be identified observational ‘realism’ of his documentaries and throughout the work of Polish filmmakerKrzysztof early feature films to a more complex, distinctive Kieslowski. Kieslowski began his career in approach to narrative and expression. As his stories documentary, before he achieved international became more enigmatic, exploring the inexplicable fame with Decalogue, his ten part television series forces at work in everyday life and the mysterious exploring the Ten Commandments, two episodes connections between characters and objects, his of which, A Short Film about Killing and A Short visual style became more stylised, poetic and Film about Love, secured cinema release as feature formalist, featuring a greater diversity of colours, films. With his subsequent films, The Double ‘unnatural lighting’, unusual compositions and Life of Veronique and the Three Colours Trilogy, camera angles. the director established himself as the leading European auteur of his day, before his untimely As a documentary filmmaker, Kieslowski captured death in March 1996. images of everyday life under Communism in Poland. As he later reflected,“At that time, I was Kieslowski’s personal style evolved from the interested in everything that could be described

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by the documentary film camera. There was a believed human experience (i.e. “reality) to be his necessity, a need – which was very exciting for us primary artistic territory, but, over his career, he – to describe the world.” When he moved on from moved away from a social and political focus to documentaries to make feature films, Kieslowski’s universal metaphysical ideas. In Kieslowski’s words, disillusionment with the limitations of the realist he always pursued “the big questions.” That is aesthetic became clear, as he explained; “What is the true meaning of life? Why get up in the “Not everything can be described. That’s the morning? Politics don’t answer that.”” (Kickasola, documentary’s great problem. It catches itself 2004) as if in its own trap. The closer it wants to get to somebody, the more that person shuts him or The director never completely abandoned his herself off from it.” (Kickasola, 2004) realist roots and continued to employ elements of a documentary aesthetic (including a slow editing In an interview with Danusis Stok, Kieslowski stated pace, occasional use of handheld camera) to that “the inner life of a human being….is the explore metaphysical and spiritual themes. hardest thing to film.” He analysed his role as film director as that of one who has “to capture what These realist conventions, as Kickasola explains, lies within us, but there’s no way of filming it. You “found their fulfillment whencoupled with more can only get nearer to it.” (Stok, 1995) formalist techniques. Among these techniques, largely avoided by documentary filmmakers, are Despite these difficulties, Kieslowski strived to highly manipulated colour schemes (both in transcend these limitations in order to explore cinematographic colour effects and manipulated the inner life - the human soul – in his films. art direction), distorted lens, lighting effects, and According to Joseph Kickasola, the director “moved the creative use of sonic elements.” (Kickasola, from being a committed realist documentarian 2004) to an anxious, probing formalist… Kieslowski still

Case Study: Three Colours Blue

Three Colours Blue is a moving exploration of the up as she hears the tragic news about her family; grief and trauma of the female protagonist, Julie, the blue notes on the manuscript; Julie’s violent who loses her husband and child in a car accident scraping of her hand against the wall as she in the film’s opening sequence. Kieslowski draws prepares to shed all trappings of her former life; the the audience into the interior life of his central enigmatic shot of the sugar cube slowly soaking up character as she struggles with great personal loss. the coffee. In these resonant scenes, the director The director conveys the grief, pain and isolation conveys the feelings of deep personal loss and experienced by Julie in the aftermath of the profound grief that have driven Julie to rid herself accident through a number of distinctive visual of all past connections and relationships - in effect techniques, including: to shut herself off from all human contact with the world. • the use of extreme close-ups and wide-angle shots in shallow focus As Dave Kehr explains, “cinematographer Slawomir ldziak shoots with a depth of field so shallow, a Foregoing the use of explicit dialogue or voice- focus so precise, that his lens can barely hold a over narration to express the inner emotions of his single, small object in clear view. The cut glass protagonist, Kieslowski focuses his camera closely hanging that Julie takes from her husband’s studio, on Julie and places her so precisely in the frame or the metallic candy wrapper that her daughter that we are connected to her private thoughts held in the wind just before the accident - these and responses to the world in an intimate and and other emotionally charged objects are allowed intense way. Examples of the use of an extreme to dissolve into shapeless impressions and free- close-up to create a powerful mood of intensity floating clouds of color (blue, of course), hanging and visually express an intimate encounter with over Julie’s world like strange spiritual effusions.” painful emotions include the opening scene after (Kehr, 1994) the accident when we adopt Julie’s POV from the hospital bed and then see her eye in giant close- • the expressive use of colour

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Blue is used throughout the film to create moods life at any moment, when she least suspects. of melancholy, solitude and coldness and to draw attention to the emotional associations that Sequence Study: Opening scene from are sparked in Julie’s mind by certain objects and Three Colours Blue places. Blue appears throughout the film as a link with the past and as a reminder of the tragedy. The opening sequence of the car accident is Blue is associated with Julie’s daughter Anna (the grounded in the conventions of realism which help blue wrapper that she holds out the car window us to feel like we are witnessing a real life event moments before the accident) and it is significant taking place before our eyes. These conventions that the one object that Julie takes with her into include observational camera technique, new life is the blue glittering lampshade, an object naturalistic outdoor cinematography and diegetic that has deep emotional associations with her dead sound. child. Suspense is created from the moment that the Bathed in cold, blue light, the swimming pool low angle shot of underneath the car reveals that scenes exude an atmosphere of isolation and something is not right. No musical soundtrack solitude. We sense that this is a woman who is is employed in this sequence. There are only the attempting to cleanse herself of painful memories, diegetic sounds of heavy traffic, the car skidding to erase a traumatic past. But here in this private, and striking the tree, the dog yelping and the silent world, the past comes back as strong young man running. Amplified wind sounds emotions. accompany the extreme long shot of the aftermath of the accident. • the use of sudden, unexpected (and unexplained) fade-outs and blue flashes The cinematography emphasises the colour accompanied by brief musical fragments blue (also the colour of the car). The misty blue atmosphere of early morning is strongly felt. The On four separate occasions in the film, Julie is director’s approach has some similarities to the visited by repressed memories of the former life observational camera technique of documentary that she has been trying to block out. These scenes filmmaking. A range of objective camera shots are highly expressive and poetic, the screen filling edited together at a slow, deliberate pace provide with ghostly blue light and symphonic sound or the build-up to the accident. The camera focuses simply fading to black. Suddenly, without warning, upon the young girl as she exits the car, following a strange, almost supernatural, presence invades her in a horizontal tracking shot. The extreme Julie’s numbed state of mind, crashing in upon her low angle close-up of the oil dripping from a tube self-imposed isolation like an ocean wave. underneath the car, with the background image of the young girl out of focus, is an unusual The first intrusion comes just before the arrival of composition. This use of a low angle camera the journalist. Dozing in her chair, a strange blue position reoccurs when the young man runs to the light playing over her face, Julie is awoken by the scene of the accident and the camera tracks from orchestral chords of her husband’s unfinished waist height. score. Blue light floods the screen as the camera tracks rapidly backwards and then forwards to The composition of the scene immediately frame Julie’s anxious face in close-up. The screen preceding the accident is also unconventional. fades to black for a few seconds while the music Kieslowski is an auteur of European cinema and plays on. The mysterious atmosphere here, and therefore one might expect the director to diverge in the subsequent visitations in the cafe and the from the conventions of Classical Hollywood swimming pool, has a metaphysical or spiritual storytelling. Instead of remaining with the car and quality. It is as if Julie has just seen a ghost. building up the suspense in a conventional way, the director cuts away to a close-up of a hand gripping These fade-outs disrupt mundane scenes with a a stick and ball. realistic, documentary touch. Through this highly evocative technique, Kieslowski gives us direct A young hitchhiker, absorbed in playing a game, access to Julie’s fractured psyche, to the solitary now becomes the focus of the sequence. The inner life into which she has retreated and where camera tracks slowly upwards, switching from she hopes to find refuge from the painful memories close-up to long shot, as the car emerges out of the of her loss. She is haunted by a tragic past that dawn light. There is a strange, ghostly quality to threatens to break through the surface of her new this composition. Our vision is completely obscured

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by the blue mist and for a few brief moments all The director keeps the camera at a distance in a that we can make out are two glowing headlights static, extreme long shot that holds for as long as and the sound of a car horn. it takes for the young man to run across the field and reach the car. This painterly shot of the blue, Aware of the approaching car, the hitchhiker sticks cloudless sky and silent landscape stretching to his hand out. When the car passes him by, he the horizon offers a striking contrast to the human returns, disappointed, to his game. It is precisely tragedy that is taking place. when he succeeds in getting the ball onto the stick, and smiles, that we hear the crash. After the It is the decision to withhold the accident and only primarily horizontal movement of the opening allow us to view the immediate aftermath from a shots, the verticality of the stick game prepares for distant perspective that makes this such a powerful the shot of a tree on which the wrecked car is and affecting scene. This is a director who believes mounted. The director frames the young man in a that there are some sacred places where the tight medium close-up as he reacts to the diegetic camera should not go and that this approach is a sounds of the car skidding and crashing. more effective way to communicate the horror and sense of helplessness felt in the face of tragedy, We hear, but do not actually see the accident. We than if the camera had been positioned inside the have to imagine what the young man sees before a car as tragedy struck. The director’s intention is POV shot connects us to his gaze. The extended long to position the audience as witness, rather than shot of the car collapsed against the tree, as the victim, of the accident. beach ball rolls away, evokes the strange quality of eerie stillness experienced in the aftermath of a tragic event – as if time has been frozen for a few References brief moments while the shock sets in. Stok, Danusia. (1995). Kieslowski on Kieslowski. The strong presence of blue light, the white London: Faber and Faber, pp. 86 & 194. plumes of smoke billowing from the engine and the whistling of the wind establish a haunting Kickasola, Joseph G. (2004). The Films of Krzysztof atmosphere. We can also hear a low, hissing Kieslowski: the Liminal Image. Continuum sound like air escaping from a balloon, perhaps (Bloomsbury Publishing), pp. 23-25. representing the life that is draining away from the victims of the crash. For a moment, the slow pace of Kehr, David. (1994). To Save the World: Kieslowski’s the sequence is interrupted as a low angle tracking Three Colours Trilogy. Film Comment Magazine shot follows the running legs of the young man as (November-December issue). http://www.petey.com/ he races towards the car. kk/docs/colors.txt [Accessed 18th July 2017].