Mourning

“Blue” is a film that starts off painful and difficult. It slowly becomes easier to watch throughout its runtime, reaching a conclusion that is powerful and joyous. We can bear to watch the early scenes only out of pity for Julie and what she must be experiencing. But Julie is fiercely immune to our pity. She has been thwarted in her plan to end her life, now she will turn her will towards annihilating all parts of that life that remind her of loss.

This scene gives us our first glimpse of Olivier, and I have to wonder what Julie thinks of him as the film begins. Olivier is Patrice’s collaborator on his grand symphony, but we find out early in the film that Julie had a major role in the work’s creation, leading some to theorize that she’s the creative energy behind the project. If Julie found Patrice to be something less than his public image would suggest, it’s logical to assume that her opinion of Olivier couldn’t be terribly high.

Olivier leaves at Julie’s hospital bedside a tiny Philips portable TV, which must have been a technological marvel at the time, but its one inch screen seems like an impossibly awful viewing experience today. Olivier turns on the TV, which has some odd skydiving scene on it, and Julie asks “is it today?” Olivier responds that it is at 5 p.m, then kindly asks if there is anything he can do for her. Julie’s big brown eyes stare ahead and then close. Olivier says goodbye and leaves.

The TV turns out and the funeral has clearly begun. The first thing we notice is the music. A segment from the symphony is being performed during the funeral. This is the first we get to hear from a piece of music by Zbigniew Preisner that is essential throughout. Apparently the piece was created first, before the film began shooting. Kieslowski pretty much gave Preisner full reign to craft the symphonic piece as he liked because Kieslowski said he paid no attention to music and rarely listened to it. That’s very strange, considering how essential this symphony is to the plot of “Blue.”

In fact, this is one of the key alignments between “Blue” and Milan Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” In the book, Tomas associates Tereza with a Beethoven motif that signals to him a destiny in their pairing and a heaviness to their connection. In a similar fashion, Julie will regularly be jolted into a different state of consciousness my fragments of this symphony, making her aware of her destiny in association with the commissioned piece. The movie version of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” largely ignores this element of Kundera’s novel.

Returning to the funeral scene, we see a shot of Olivier, then it cuts to two caskets, one noticeably smaller than the other. Julie reaches out to stroke the screen where the smaller casket is displayed.

A dignitary then eulogizes Patrice, briefly mentioning his daughter while not saying a word about Julie. At one point he notes that Patrice was considered one of the world’s great composers and it seems that Julie briefly smiles at this sentiment, before grief returns as the speech turns towards her daughter. The TV reception then fades out (possibly because Julie switched the channel, unable to watch any more) and the scene ends with a close up, prominently displaying her eye.

This is a very difficult scene to take in the first time, but it is economically shot and therefore short, a gift to viewers Kieslowski is conscious of making sit through too much too early. In repeat viewings, I take away from it a certain pride in Julie that the music, which she had a major role creating, is being so widely celebrated. It’s also obvious that Julie’s feelings towards her late husband are mixed and perhaps confusing.

But the strongest takeaway remains the first feeling evoked: that the loss of her daughter is overwhelming and too much to bear.