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Cinema and Subjectivity in Krzysztof Kieślowski
Author(s): Paul C. SantilliSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 64, No. 1, Special Issue: Thinkingthrough Cinema: Film as Philosophy (Winter, 2006), pp. 147-156Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3700499
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PAUL C. SANTILLI
Cinema andSubjectivity n KrzysztofKieflowski
Sofarwewere loatingn thevastvacuum f Demo-critusraisedhigh on the wings of the butterfly
calledmetaphysics,wherewe even conversedwithspirits.Now,thesobering orceof self-knowledgespullingback its silkenwings,and once againwereturnothe firmground f experiencendcommonsense.
Immanuel ant,Dreams fa SpiritSeer 1766)
Andcanfilm dowhatKant ouldnotdo?StanleyCavell,Contesting ears:TheHollywood
MelodramaftheUnknownWoman1995)
Near the conclusion of the Critiqueof PracticalReason, Kant remarksthat if a human being
were able to know with complete clarity(Erleuchtung)hat there s a God and a soul des-tined for an afterlife,then "[a]s long as humannatureremainsas it is, humanconduct wouldbethus changedinto a mere mechanism n which,as in a puppetshow, everythingwouldgesticu-late well but there would be no life in the fig-ures."' He contends that our natural,sensuousdesire for happiness would lead us to complyunfailinglywith the moral law once we recog-nized "God and eternitywith their awful maj-esty."In an interesting wist on Plato's allegory
of the cave, Kant suggests that metaphysicalenlightenmentby itself would not free us fromthe dominationof the marionettescasting theirlife-like shadows on the wall of the cave. It
would rather ransformus into those very mari-onettes! We would become mere simulacra of
humansbecausewe would operateaccording oourinclinations,especiallyourfears,and wouldnot experience that tension between duty andsensuousnessthatis the very mark of our free-dom anddignity.By his awesomepresenceand
power,God would be a sortof puppetmaster.Earlier n the Critique,Kant also made use ofthe marionette heater to defend his distinction
between acts undertaken in the phenomenalappearanceof time and the noumenalrealityof
freedom. If a temporalseries were simplya fea-ture of realityin itself and not a mode of sens-ible consciousness determining he way reality
appears,thenhumanactions would belong to a
causallyorderedsequence n time, and so wouldnotbe free. Kant writes: "A humanbeing wouldbe a marionette or an automaton...built and
wound up by the Supreme Artist."2It is not
enough for Kant that there be a self-consciousand rational "ghost in the machine"to distin-
guish the human being from an automaton:
"self-consciousness would indeed make him athinking automaton,but the consciousness ofhis spontaneity,if this is held to be freedom,would be a mere illusion." A genuine and not
illusory free act must spring from the will's
conformity to a moral law that transcendsthe
spatial-temporal order. Such an act would
appear o externaleyes to come from nowhere;
nothingin the causal temporalseries of events
preceding it could have predetermined t. In
itself, however, t wouldspring rom thedeepest,butunseen,realityof free subjectivity.
So, human freedom in Kantian thoughtnecessitates a gap between our experience as
temporal, phenomenal beings and our inner
reality as spiritualsubjects of moral law. Not
only are we theoreticallybarredby the Critiqueof Pure Reason fromknowingGod and ourownsouls as they arein themselves,but, as the Cri-
tique of Practical Reason suggests, we shouldnot even desire to cross this "infinite gulf."3Penetrating he veil of phenomenamay be mor-
ally disastrous.As Slovenian cultural theorist
Slavoj Zifek has written, "what appears as'essential' (morallaw in ourselves) is possibleand thinkable only within the horizon of our
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148 ThinkingThroughCinema:Film as Philosophy
limitation to the domain of phenomenalreality;if it werepossibleforus to trespass his limitationand to gain a direct insight into the noumenal
thing, we would lose the very capacity whichenables us to transcend the limits of sensible
experience(moraldignityandfreedom)."4Kantmocks the claims of theologicalmetaphysicstoknowthedirecttruthaboutthehighestrealityas
being infected with "transcendentpresump-tions and theories of the supersensible"and
indulging n a "magic anternof chimeras." So,Kant can think of no worse deflation of the
pretensions of those who would go beyondappearanceo cognize God and the soul than to
comparethem to the illusions of the
puppettheater and the magic lantern, ancestors ofmoderncinema!
And yet, it could also be said that the moderncinemais itself the Kantianart formpar excel-lence. One could say of movies that they are,accordingto Zi2iek,"notsimply the domain of
phenomena, but those 'magic moments' inwhich another,noumenaldimension momentar-
ily 'appears' in (shines through) empirical/contingentphenomena."6When a film audience
experiences mages on the screen it is in no dan-
ger of taking them for agents operating in a"real"spatio-temporalcontinuum,for what isseen are hyper-phenomenal apparitions, lesssubstantial hanpuppets.In the cinema there isno temptation o try to penetrate he veil of the
phenomena to see what is really going on,behind the screen, as it were. A film director
may, however, suggest that therearemetaphys-ical andspiritualdepthsto the scenes being dis-
played, offering viewers an occasion to reflecton God, freedom, and the human soul. In this
respect, a film can be taken as a philosophicalact expressing ideas about the groundof phe-nomena,withoutpretendingto offer a concep-tualknowledgeof thatground.When we watcha good film we may experience,not the rigidlydetermined and lifeless marionettes that we
know themoving images "really"are,butratherthe evocation of what may be life's "deepestessence."
In whatfollows, I shallsuggestthatsuch meta-
physicaland spiritualdepthsinfuse the films ofthe late Polish director,Krzysztof Kieflowski,
a master at shaping the screen image to probea reality underlying ordinary,mundane exist-ence. Specifically,I hope to show by a studyof
three of his films, Decalogue 1 (1988), LaDouble Vie de Veronique [The Double Life of
Veronique] (1991), and Bleu [Three Colors:
Blue] (1993), thatKieflowskiprovidesa power-ful testimonyto, or even an argument or, the
reality of a human soul. His films are artistic
phenomenathat have much to teach us aboutthe humanpsyche, moralpower, and the abso-
lute, indirectlyand discreetlywithoutviolatingKantianprohibitionsagainst knowing being initself. I do not want to imply, however, thatKieflowski has a distinctlyKantianview of the
soul, as a transcendentalego, for example.Rather,I want to examine how his films reveal,in his
words,"the secretlife of
people"that ani-
mates the gestures and countenances that we
display to one another.I shall try, then,to indi-cate some of the ways Kieflowski creates a kindof cinematic iconographyendeavoringto dis-close "the soul on celluloid,"to borrowMonika
Maurer'sexpression.8To assist my interpret-ationof these films, I shall continue to draw on
the fertile thinkingof Slavoj Ziiek's Lacanian
approach o cinema and subjectivity,which he
putsto good use in his book on Kieflowski, The
Fright of Real Tears, and in other writings. We
do not need to subscribe o Lacanianorthodoxyin orderto recognizethe powerof depth psych-ology for eliciting good readingsof movies likeKieflowski's that explore subtle facets of thehumansubjectand "bearwitness to the human
personality."9Kieflowski does not ever confess
to any interestin psychoanalysis,but both thethematic content and style of his films lend
themselves, I think, very naturallyto Zifek's
unique blend of Lacaniandevelopmental psy-chology andKantian ranscendentalism.
Kieflowski's films are not known for theirplotor action. Instead, they use artful cinemato-
graphy, sparse dialogue, subtle acting, and
haunting musical scores to gesture toward a
mysterious,noumenal orderof being. In some
early films, Kieflowski experiments with thefantasticto link the supersensiblewith spatio-temporal reality. In Bez Konca [No End] (1984),
for instance, the ghost of a widow's recentlydeceasedhusbandmakes an appearance, nd in
Przypadek [Blind Chance] (1981), the protagonist,
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Santilli CinemaandSubjectivityn KrzysztofKieslowski 149
Witek(BoguslawLinda),has the chance to livethreealternative ives, much like the charactersin the Tom Tykwer'sfilm Lola rennt[RunLola
Run] (1998). But for the most part,Kieflowskisticks to a narrative realism that respects theKantianchallenge for a filmmakerto reveal a
spiritualhorizon in ordinaryexistence without
indulging in fantastic visions of spirits and
ghosts. Kieflowski himself has recognized the
difficulty of meeting this challenge:"Thisgoalis to capturewhat lies withinus, but there is no
way of filming it." As he said of his film, TheDouble Life of Veronique:"The film is about
sensibility,presentimentsandrelationships hat
are difficult to name... Showing this on film isdifficult:if I show too much the mystery disap-pears."0
A good introduction o Kieflowski's cinemais The Decalogue. The Decalogue consists often one-hourfilms made for Polish television in
1988 and representsan attemptto translate he
meaningof theTenCommandments or modern
society. All ten films of TheDecalogue are setin the samemassive apartment omplexin War-saw at a time when Polish society was still suf-
fering from the spiritual and economic
deprivations of communist rule. The Polishworldwas, Kieflowski says, "terribleanddull,"full of pitilesspeople, moving in a gray,robotic
atmosphere alone, isolated, and lonely.AlthoughKieflowski's earlierfilms, both in the
documentary and narrative genre, engagedpolitical events in Poland,participatingn whatwas thencalled "thecinemaof moralconcern,"The Decalogue focuses more on the psycho-logical and moral life of individuals,using the
depressingpoliticalclimate of martial aw in the
1980s only as a backdrop for exploring theinnerstates of his characters." "All my films,"he says, "areabout individuals who can't quitefind theirbearings,who don't quite know howto live, who don't really know what's right or
wrong and are desperately ooking."'2Politics,he asserts,whetherof the CommunistParty,the
Solidarity Movement, or Western liberalism,cannot answer "our essential, fundamental,humanandhumanisticquestions."13
Decalogue 1 explicitly poses a philosophicalquestionabouttherealityandnatureof the soul.
It is a meditationon what for Kieflowski wouldbe the first of the Ten Commandments:"Thou
shalt not worshipfalse gods."This film tells of
a close relation between a father, Krzysztof
(Henryk Baranowski), and his young son,Pawel (Wojclech Klata). (The mother is away
and indications are that it is not a good mar-riage.) The plot turnson Pawel's desire to usehis new Christmasice skates on a local pondand his father'scaution aboutmakingsure thatthe ice is thickenough.Krzysztof s a professorof computer science, engaged in a project to
develop software for a computerto construct
poems and stories.As he explainsto his univer-
sity class, with his son watchingfrom the backof the room, a properly programmedcomputer
may have a will, aesthetic preferences,and a
personalityof its own. Tragicallyandironically,however, his computerfails to gauge correctlythe thickness of the pond's ice, which thawsbecause of "unexplainedevents," causing hisson to drown while tryingout his new skates.
Early in the film, Pawel comes across the
corpse of a dog lying in the street and then,
shortlythereafter,readsabout a man's death inthe obituary section of the newspaper.These
experiences disturbhim, promptinghim to askhis fatheraboutwhy peopledie. Inresponse,his
father,Krzysztof,offers an accountof death in
which the human being is described as amachine. Deathoccurs,he says, "whenthe heart
stops pumping blood.., movement ceases,
everything stops." Pawel, not quite satisfiedwith this, asks about some wordshe saw in the
paper,"thedeceased's peace of soul,"to whichhis fatherreplies:"It'sa formof words of fare-well. There is no soul."At the end of the film,of course, these words that reduce the human
being to an automatonwill come back to tor-ment him, as the encounterwith the reality of
his son's drowningshatters he preciousmath-ematical certaintiesby which he has structuredhis life. In one beautiful and haunting scene,Kieflowski suggests the dissolution of such
certainties by filming a splotch of blue ink
mysteriously seeping through some paper on
Krzysztof's desk. There is a perfectly rational
explanationfor the appearanceof this stain-the bottom of an ink bottle has cracked-but inthis context the viewer is allowed to discern an
elemental, disruptive reality lurking beneathand behind our solid, phenomenalreality. We
learn as the film unfolds that at the verymoment the blue ink washed over Krzysztof'sdesk, the ice on which Pawel was skating gave
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150 ThinkingThroughCinema:Film as Philosophy
way, causing his death. The question KieS-lowski elicits in this film is how we could ever
know this deeper realitythat eludes ourmodern
machines andscientificcalculations.Whatin usfails when the computer, our contemporary"graven mage"of the gods, fails?
We do have a sense fromKieflowski thatthe
father did not attend o his own vague intuitionsof unease aboutthe ice, intuitionsthat could notbe translated into a computer program.Even
though his measurements presumably calcu-lated the safety of the ice sheet, Krzysztofnevertheless at one point ventures out to the
pond to feel it for himself. There he observes a
youngman huddled
bya fire on the side of the
pond. The man says nothingbut gazes directlyat Krzysztofwith an intense, questioninglook.As we watch this we have an ominoussense of
something wrongand know thatKrzysztofdoesas well. Viewers of the entire Decalogue will
recognize this silent, watchful character ArturBarcii) as one who appears briefly in otherfilms of the series, for example:as a student nthe class of a philosophyprofessorwho earlierin her life had abandoneda Jewish child to the
Nazis (Decalogue 8); as a medical intern in the
office of a doctor who makes a prognosis thathe knows is not true in order to save a fetus
from abortion (Decalogue 2); as a highwayworker who peers into the eyes of a young manabout to murder a cab driver (Decalogue 5).Variousinterpretations ave been given for thischaracter'sappearance.He has been describedas an angel, a witness, and an embodimentofconscience.14 His appearance by the pond in
Decalogue 1 suggests that there is a gapbetween what the protagonistknows and what
he is aboutto do, a gap thatcan only be closedby an attunement o somethingother than whatcan be gauged by a machine. Failing to heed
feelings, intuitions, and presentiments, hemisses a kind of truthabout the fragilenatureofthe humanrealityhe has attempted o reduce to
computercodes-with terribleconsequences.
I'
Such attunementto the mystery of being that
lies below the surface of ordinary, mpersonalreality as a "shadowy double," in Zifek'swords, is treated n great depthin Kieflowski's
subsequent ilms, The Double Life of Veroniqueand the trilogy, Three Colors: Blue, White,and
Red.15Kieflowski claims that The DoubleLife,
the next workI examine, is a film about "emo-tions and nothing else," but in fact it is a filmabout the psyche in a broad sense and aboutwhat Geoff Andrew has called "the unseen,unfathomable forces-fate and chance-that
shape our lives even as we go aboutour banal
everyday business."'16With a visual style thatcritic JonathanRomney has called "luminous,numinous, and ominous," it tells a complex
story of two very young women, Veronika and
Veronique(bothplayed by IreneJacob),livingdifferent but
uncannily parallellives, one in
Poland and one in France."7The film openswith a voice-overannouncing hatthese womenwere born on the same day in 1968 and shows
each as a little girl being spokento by a mother,who later dies. They bothhave gentle fatherstowhom they are very close; both have beautiful
singing voices, andboth,incredibly,have a ser-ious heartcondition.
The firstpartof the film, which is in Polish,concentrateson momentsin the last days in the
life of Veronika,a spontaneously oyful person
whom we first meet singing ecstatically in adownpourwhile the rest of her chorusruns forcover. Veronika travels to Krakow from her
hometown and wins a music competition,
allowing her to performa celestially beautiful
piece of music.Duringher debutconcert,as shereaches for an impossibly high note, she per-ishes from a heart attack.Her storycloses from
the viewpoint of her glass-topped coffin; we
watch, as though from the grave, dirt beingshoveled from above onto the coffin until the
screen becomes entirelyblack. In thatmoment,we are broughtto the bedroomof the French-womanVeronique,who is making ove with her
boyfriend. Veronique tells her boyfriend thatshe feels a deep sense of loss and sadness.
Afterward,she decides to give up her singingcareer,have her heart condition taken care of,andaccepta job as a music teacherat a provin-cial elementaryschool. She visits her widowedfatheron occasion andseems resignedto a dull,but comfortable, ife, until she attendsa mari-
onetteperformanceatherschool.
Theperformances puton in the school audi-torium, which is filled with excited children.The camera alternates shots of the children's
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Santilli CinemaandSubjectivityn KrzysztofKieslowski 151
faces with the marionetteshow conductedby a
puppetmasternamedAlexandreFabbri PhilippeVolter). Alexandre draws a ballerina from a
black box and sets it into a dance motion. Theballerina collapses, dies, and miraculouslycomes to life again as an angel-like being or a
large winged butterfly,to the relief of the dis-tressed school children. Given the beauty and
psychological power of this scene, one canunderstandwhat Henrichvon Kleist was gettingat when he observedin his 1810 essay "On the
PuppetTheater" hat,althoughthe puppetis anautomatonmanipulatedby a humanmaster,wewitness in its movementsa graceandspiritthatseem more soulful than those of a real human
dancer.18Kieflowski seems also to have cap-tured cinematically the sensibilities of Rilke'slines from the fourthDuinoElegy, Ich will nichtdiese halbgefiilltenMasken, lieber die Puppe[I won't endure these half-filled humanmasks;better,the puppet],andEngel undPuppe:dannist endlichSchauspiel [Angel andpuppet:a real
play, finally].19Duringthis performance, he camera catches
Veroniquelooking into a backstagemirrorand
spotting the puppet master, Alexandre,
absorbed n his work. He in turnsees her look-ing at him and seems disturbedby that fact.
Beginning with this meeting in the mirror,a
relationship develops between Alexandre and
Veronique.Alexandrebegins to lureVeroniqueto him by sending her little mysterious itemslike a shoestring,a phone call, and a tape withtrainstation noises. In one shot of Veronique'sapartment, an orange-yellow light dances
around,like an angelic visitor, apparentlycast
by a mirrorheld by Alexandre n anotherapart-
ment window. It becomes clear later that thispuppetmasterhas somehowacquiredknowledgeof Veronique'sdouble, Veronika,and is usingthis knowledgebothto seduceVeroniqueand tofabricate a story for another of his marionettedramas.OnceVeroniqueherselfrecognizesthis,her relationshipwith Alexandrecrumbles,andshe returns n tears o her father'shome.
How are we to understand hese incidents?
Althoughthe age of Veronique-Veronikan thismovie appears to be about twenty-two and
althoughthe character s played by an actress
(Irene Jacob) of twenty-five, Kieflowski him-self said, "Irealized it's a film abouta girl andnot a young woman."20Veronique is a "girl"
who has lost her motherbut who is still attached
to and hauntedby this absentmother. As a psy-
choanalyst would remind us, until she can in
some way cut herself off from her mother,shecannotdevelop a maturesubjectivity hat wouldallow her to act as an independentego and,
among other things, have a healthy love rela-
tionship with a male. Both the death ofVeronika and Veronique's encounter withAlexandre'spuppets,I would suggest, represent
phases of a young woman's psychological and
spiritual development that provide clues toKieflowski's understandingof the importanceof the soul.
The PolishVeronika s depictedas being,des-pite her illness, extraordinarily uoyant,full ofemotion and what Lacanianswould call jouis-sance. She takespassionatedelightin her love-
making as she does with her music, but it is a
dreamy, unanchoreddelight. She lives at theLacanian maginary,presymbolic,and narcissis-
tic stage of psychologicaldevelopment.Realityto her is an apparition, ymbolized by her train
journeyto Krakow where she looks at villagesthrough he distortingglass of the trainwindow,and then throughthe furtherdeformationsof a
prized glass ball. When she makes love shesmiles at her own photograph,which is smilingbackather.Althoughmalefiguresappearbrieflyin herworld,as a very masculineaunt,a dwarf-like lawyer, and a passerby who exposes his
penis to her,theyhaveno resonance n herbeing.In a way, she lives as a purevoice disconnectedfrom her body, or as what has been called an
acousmatic,"a voice withoutabearer,withoutan
assignable place, floating in an intermediate
space."21Lacanianshold such a disembodied
voice to be a little bit of theotheror apetiteobjeta, which stands for a void left by the absentmother.We attachourselvesto suchthingsin aneffort to recover helostrealityof what we reallydesire, the unconditionaladmiring gaze of amother who loves us and us alone. So, I believe
thatVeronika'sdevotionto hervoice is a symp-tom of her unwillingnessor inabilityto give upher mother.WhatRenataSaleclhas saidof vocal
performancesits the case of Veronikaverywell:"Thesingerhas to approachself-annihilation' sa subjectin order to offer himself or herself as
purevoice."22 n thecase of Veronikawe haveagirl who is purevoice because she is not yet a
subject,who in fact resists subjectivization.To
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152 ThinkingThroughCinema:Film as Philosophy
become a subject,she would have to, as Zifeksays, "renounce...
he objectwhich vouches forthe fantasmatic, incestuous link [with the
mother] ."23The death of VeronikaspursVeronique,her
double,to give upher voice to save her life. Theformationof subjectivityrequiresus earlyin lifeto movefrom thenarcissistic elf-absorptiono aself-reflectivestage, in which we ourselves are
split inwardly,and not magically entrancedbytheappearance f ourselves n others.Inpsycho-analytictermsit is the "father,"he representa-tive of the law and the entire sociocultural
system of codes and symbols, that makes the
splice (or castration)necessaryfor
subjectivityand allows a normal,maturesubject to "tarrywith thenegative,"as Zifek putsit, andintegrateoneself reflectively into a symbolic-linguisticreality.24UnlikeVeronika,Veroniquedoes havean encounter with a male, Alexandre, whichrestimulates he kind of self-reflectionandsense
of emptiness that the death of Veronika firstawakened n her.She says to herfather,"I am inlove. I just don't know with what."What fasci-nates her from the startaboutAlexandre s that
she is theobjectof his gaze firstmirroredduring
the puppetperformance.Whatbecomes clearastheir relationship develops, however, is thatwhat she loves in him is herself as he looks ather, not what he is in himself. Each time he
sends mysterious objects, she is entrancedbydreamy, shapeless possibilities in her soul towhich he seems to hold the key and to whichthese items seem to be objective correlatives.
Therefore,despiteher arousedsubjectivity,sheis still in thegripof a woundednarcissism.
Nearthe conclusion of the film, after she and
Alexandremakelove, Veroniquecomes into hisworkshopand sees two marionettesmadein herexact likeness. At that moment, when she andher doppelgangerare made mundanelyvisibleto herby this fabricator,her love for Alexandre
collapses and she returns o her father's home.
Why? Kie lowski said that he employed the
puppetmasterBruce Schwartz to perform thedance of the dying ballerinabecause Schwartzdoes not disguise his hands when performing:"you can see his enormouspaws all the time.Yet you don't notice them; you only see the
dancing, the puppet dancing beautifully. Thatwas something,which I thoughtwas absolutelynecessary. That Alexandre's hands should be
there, too, the hands of someone who's manipu-
lating something."'25When Veroniquewatchesthe puppetperformance,Alexandre's handsare
translucently phenomenal, invested with theluminous, transfiguring,and soulful possibil-ities she sees in the puppetsthemselves. Whenshe then looks at the puppetshe has manufac-turedto represent he two Veroniques("incaseone gets damaged," says Alexandre), theysicken her with their lifelessness, theirflatness,their lack of spirit,and their raw reality. Theyno longer mirror her inchoate thoughts andinner longings; rather, in their naked, publicstatethey are whatthey are in themselves,meresimulacraof the human soul. The marionettes
are like the hands of theirmanipulatorhat haveso recently caressed her; these hands are no
longer part of a fantasy show, but big pawswithout noumenaldepth. As Zifek has said inanothercontext,"life becomes disgustingwhenthe fantasythat mediates our access to it disinte-
grates, so that we are directly confronted withthe Real."26Now thepuppetsare not the angelicbeings drawing he soul to a mysteriouskinshipwith noumenaldepths,but Rilke's child dolls,which, he says, are "unmaskedas the gruesome
foreign bodyon which we squandered urpurestaffection.''27
Veronique remains immature.28Unable tobecome a couple, she remainsultimatelyin theshadow of her double until she experiences aloss of her intimatefantasy.When definingthenatureof fetishes in the cinema, Marc Vernetwrote that"in the heart of the desireto see andto know is the desire not to see and not to
know."29Thisinsight,I think,applies quitewell
to the psychology of this young woman who,
fascinated by representationsof reality thatpromisefantasticallydeepand richexperiences,prevents herself from knowing or loving theactual source of these phenomena.In the nextfilm Kieflowski directed, Three Colors: Blue,the reverse could be said of its main character
Julie(played by JulietBinoche):"Inthe heartofthe desire not to see and not to know is thedesireto see andto know."
Blue is about a Frenchwomanwho loses her
husbandand daughterin an automobile crash
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Santilli CinemaandSubjectivityn KrzysztofKieslowski 153
and as result of this traumatries to commit a
kindof psychic suicideby obliteratingheriden-
tity andher memories. She does this by selling
off her possessions, closing up her house, tear-ing up a musical score on which she and her
husband,Patrice,a famouscomposer,had been
working, and moving to a Paris neighborhoodwhere she hopes she can live in anonymity.At areal estate office where she is looking for an
apartment,she replies to the agent's inquiryabouther occupationthat she does "Nothing-Nothingat all"(theagent, by the way, is uncan-
nily playedby PhilippeVolter,Alexandre n theDouble Life). This refrain is repeatedlater toher mother whom she visits
ata
nursinghome:"I'll only do what I want to now. Nothing. Idon't want any belonging, any memories...no
friends,no love."
For the narcissisticVeronique, he world wasa mirrorof her psychic need for a mother. Forthe traumatized ulie, the world is a representa-tion divested of all significanceand desire. Thisis shownbrilliantlyearlyin the film, as she laysin her hospital bed after the accident, throughthe use of an immense closeup of her eye thatcontains only the mirage images of her sur-
roundings, ncludingher attendingdoctor,whoin hereye's reflectionlooks exactly the same asthe fatherof Veronique.(He is indeedplayedbythe same actor,ClaudeDuneton.)Her eye is atwin of the miniature television her friend,Oliver, brings her so that she can watch thefuneral of her husband and daughter. In amomentof intense pathos, as Julie touches the
tiny television screendepictingthe two coffins,the viewer experiences a powerful overlay ofKieflowski's cross-references. The television
monitorremindsus of the endingof DecalogueI where the image of Pawel after his death
lingers, frozen onto a television screen, ofVeronika's glass-topped coffin and her treas-ured glass ball, of the mirrorin which Vero-
nique and Alexandre first espy each other,andnow, in Blue, of the cold mirroringeye of Julieherself. It is as thoughunder he impactof trau-matic losses the familiar reality of the worldtakes on an uncannyalien aspect, or deadness,makingit unreal,nothingmore thana phantom.Julie cannotmourn her dead daughterand hus-
band or cry.It is as thoughhereyes now are notreal humaneyes, but cold mirrors, ike the icysurfaceof the fatefulpondin Decalogue 1. The
blue tints of the cinematographytself reinforcethe tones of melancholy,coolness, and bound-less nothing, evoking the collapse of Julie's
world.In her act of withdrawal,not only does Julie
tryto stripthe luminous sheen off the everydayworld-highlighted by a scene where she
angrily scrapes her knuckles along a stonewall-so that for her it has no significance or
desirability,she also tries to remove any of herfeatures that may arouse another subject'sdesire for her. If, as Levinas has suggested,we
perceive infinite and incalculabledepthsin theface and words of another beckoning us to
goodness and to love, then for Julie the trickisto presenta visage thatsignifies nothing.In themarionette theater we are entranced by the
supersensible possibilities of an apparitionalautomaton.We could say that Julie, suffering
perhapsfrom what psychiatristshave called a"marionettesyndrome,"a complex of feelingsof powerlessness, emotional rigidity, and egoalienation,wantsto exhibit herself as a soulless
puppet and an empty shell.30 To her friend,Oliver (Benrit Regent), who confesses his lovefor her afterthe accident,and with whom she
shares one night of kind, but dispassionate,lovemaking, she says, "I'm like any otherwoman. I sweat. I cough. I have cavities. Youwon't miss me." To love someone,one mustseehim orheras a kind of virtual mage, disclosingand concealing depths, both inaccessible and
lovely. It is thatdepththatVeroniquebelievedshe saw in the puppets and token signs fromAlexandre. By emphasizing the repellantaspects of her flesh, Julie wishes to disenchantherown beingin the eyes of her male friendand
negate his desire for her. Whereas Veroniquewants to be the desired object of a gaze thatholds her gaze, Julie wants to deflect the gaze,to be merely a window without soul. In short,she wants to become for her fellow human
being a flat automatonby stressing, paradox-ically, the banalcarnalityof herhumanity.
Julie's own elderlymotherspendsherdaysina nursing home gazing at the most insipidimages television has at its disposal. Sufferingfrom something like Alzheimer's disease, shehas lost her memory and misrecognizes her
daughter, confusing her with her own sister,Marie France. She is objectively what her
daughterwould need to become to succeed in
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154 ThinkingThroughCinema:Film as Philosophy
her nihilistic retreat from reality, a blank eyepeering at a meaninglessscreen. But there is a
gap between the mother and daughter that
ensuresthat Julie will not be caught,like Vero-nique,in anostalgic longingfor the lost mother.The mother is lost, but she is also embarrass-
ingly presentpreciselyas one who is lost, repel-ling rather than inviting a psychic union or
doubling,offering therebya kindof escape froma narcissistic mmaturity ot available or youngVeronique.WhereasVeroniquewas entranced
by the dream that there was an otherwho boreher name (Veronika)to replacethe motherwhoknew hername,Julie is compelledto accepttheexistenceof a motherwho misnamesher.In this
misrecognition ies hope for Julie's growthintoa morecompletehumansubject.
The awareness that she is not the beloved
object of her mother's gaze parallelsa truthtowhich she comes later in the movie. As the film
unfolds, Julie, despite her resolve, begins toform attachmentswith her Parisianneighborsand to reawaken to the world around her. In
particular, he forms a close relationshipwith a
stripper amedLucille(CharlotteV6ry,a raucousand earthy person, who embodies all the sex
and erotic desire that Julie has managed tosuppress.It is in Lucille's club that she sees,
ironicallyon a television screen,a documentaryabout her husband, Patrice, and learns for thefirst time that he had a mistress. The shock of
this knowledge propels her back to the worldshe thoughtshe knew to seek out friends, like
Oliver,to explaintheaffairher husbandhadwiththis young woman named Sandrine(FlorencePernel).Aware now of her own misrecognitionof her married ife and of fantasy elements in
herconstructionof a happy marriage, he tracksdown Sandrine,the ex-mistress, only to learnthatthis womanis pregnantwithPatrice's child.
Then, in an extraordinary nd spontaneousact,Julie makes arrangementso give Sandrineandthe child her house and her money. Whataccounts orthisact?
The act cannot be interpretedsimply in thewords Sandrine uses: "Patrice told me a lot
about you. That you are good... That you are
good and generous. That's what you want tobe." The cold look on Julie's face tells us that
Sandrinehas misread this gesture. Rather,weviewers shouldsee it in the context of the whole
film as a gesturefrom the depthsof the empty
pit into which Julie has descended, and not asan act of ordinaryvirtue. One can recognizesuch gesturesin other Kieflowski films-spon-
taneousattempts o bear witness to the needs ofanotherperson, which seem to spring from a
subjectivity hat is bothunlike andyet underlies
ordinaryhumanagency.A good exampleof thisis that of the doctor in Decalogue 2, whoseunbearable oss of his entire family during a
bombing raid in World War II at first isolatesanddeadenshim to his fellow humans,butalso,in the course of time, moves him to heed sym-
pathetically the desperate pleas of a womanwho is (like Sandrine)pregnantwith a lover'schild and who is aboutto have an abortionshe
does not want.Lying about a prognosisin orderto alter this woman's decision to have an abor-
tion, the doctor becomes a good and faithfulwitness who, at least for a while, forms a con-nection with another soul. Likewise, in her
offering to Sandrineand her child, Julie drawson her shatteredife, the breakdownof her real-
ity. Emergingfrom the darknight of her soul,she attains a degree of free subjectivity andhuman contact that was not possible for the
narcissisticVeronique, in whom there was no
moralcapacitywhatsoever.31In Three Colors: Blue, this liberating move-
ment out of the psyche's fathomlessdepthsto acommunion with others is magnificently cap-turedby Kieflowski's integrationof ZbigniewPreisner'smusical score. While Veroniquewas
a presence haunted by the absence of her
double, Julie throughout he film is an absencehauntedby a presence of musical phrasesthatreturnfrom her unconsciousnesslike powerfulwaves. To take oneexample,while she is swim-
ming in the blue waters of an indoor pool,musical fragmentsfrom her husband's unfin-ished concerto wash over her as the screen
image fadesaway completelyfor a few seconds.This returnof repressedmusicalmemoriespro-vokes what JonathanLear has called "petitsmorts,"breaks n the flow of mentallife and the
fabric of meaning, presenting "the possibilityfor new possibilities."32Despite her consciouschoice to retreat from human contact and to
eraseherpast,there remains n Juliea powerfulundercurrent f will and desire associatedwith
the music her husbandhad composed. It is thisperiodic,resurgent ifeforce thatsaves her fromthe psychosis of a complete withdrawalfrom
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Santilli Cinemaand Subjectivityn KrzysztofKieslowski 155
realityandactuallymoves her to finish the con-certo herself. The music eruptswith a drivingSchopenhauerianenergy, as though memory
were an earthy, palpablething, capable at anypointof disruptingordinary xistence.
Blue concludes, as does the Double Life ofVeronique,with an act of lovemaking. Juliereturnsto Oliver and accepts his profession oflove. As they lie with one another,we hear a
splendid concerto (scored by Preisner) and achorussinging in Greek the words of St. Paul's"FirstLetter to the Corinthians." ulie's face is
pressed against a window sprayedwith a rainunleashedfrom the heavens. The chorus sings:
"ThoughI have all faith so that I could movemountains,without ove I amnothing."We thenfollow the camera as it tracesa loop, creatinga
montage oining imagesof Julie's mother n her
nursinghome,Lucille at herstripclub,and San-drine n a hospitalwhere her fetus appearson anultrasoundmonitor,a television now alive with
humanreality.Then,as Oliversleeps, to use thewords of Kieflowski's script:"By the windowwe findJulie,herface in her hands. Oneby one,tearsappearon these hands.Julie is crying help-
lessly." 3 Annette Insdorf has said of this final
scene: "The music engenders what could becalled an epiphany;as the camera embracesthe
characters, t equalizes, forgives, and suggestshope."34The last shot of the film lingers onJulie's face, giving us the opportunity towitness that this face is still hauntedby death,by the infidelity of her husband, and by the
collapse of her illusions. But it is also a face,
just because it has been strippedof its conceitsand exposed to "the zero-pointof the night ofthe world,"that can bearwitness to a "mystical
communion of agape" or something likeChristian love.35 We can say, then, that withJulie the soul of a womanhas truly grownfromtheprimary arcissism ndfantasiesof Veroniqueto a matureacceptanceof realityandof the other.It is a soul whose moralpowerand transcenden-tal life we have been privileged to behold,thanks to the genius of Kieflowski, as thoughwe were indeedpresentat a cinematicepiphany.
IV. CONCLUSION
In an interview shortly before he died, KieS-lowski said: "Filmis helpless when it comes to
describingthe soul,just as it is describingmanyotherthings, like a state of consciousness. Youhave to find methods, tricks, which may be
more or less successful in makingit understoodthat this is whatyour film is about."He admit-ted that "some eople may like those tricks,
othersmaynot." No doubt,film is an enchant-
ing illusion that"tricks"us intothinking hat thecharactersand scenery are real when they are
mereappearancesof appearances,and no doubtfilm can be interpreted,ike the puppettheater,to be a simplistic way to approach he human
psychein comparison o philosophy.The risk offilm is the sameas thatof the puppettheater,or
indeed any otheruse of icon or
graven image:that one will become idolatrous,superstitious,or presumptuous ather hancautiouslyreflect-ive about extra-mundanereality. Kieflowski
himself planned to retire from making films,live in the country, and read favorite authorslike Dostoyevsky and Dickens, who wrote thekind of literaturethat provided access to theimmanent and transcendent dimensions of
experiencethat he triedto recreate n his films.
Unfortunately,he died of a heartattackat fifty-four, shortly after making his last film Three
Colors: Red. I would contendthat, despite hissense of disappointmentwith cinema, KieS-lowski did succeed throughhis explorationsof
the mysteriousdepthsof the humanpersonalityin offeringto his audienceanintriguingand ser-ious philosophyof the soul.
The "tricks"hat I have tried to describe here
in my brief examinationof some of his films-the intimations of a doubled self, cinematic
cross-references,psychically charged objects,and ethereal music-do arousein us a sense of
an extra-phenomenalreality while respectingthe limits of realism and the Kantianban on
direct insight into the noumenallytranscendentand immanent. t is a creditto his ambitionsand
integrity as an artist that he was not satisfiedwith this and wished to do even more "todescribe whatlies within us."
PAULC. SANTILLI
Departmentf PhilosophySienaCollegeLoudonville, ewYork12211
USA
INTERNET:antilli@ iena.edu
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156 ThinkingThroughCinema:Film as Philosophy
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans.
Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), p. 122. I thank members of the Metaphysical Society of
America and members of the Philosophy Department at Penn
State University for their encouraging comments on earlier
drafts of this essay. Thanks also to the editors, Tom Warten-
berg and Murray Smith, for their insightful suggestions.2. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 85.
3. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 48.
4. Slavoj Zifek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegeland the Critique of Ideology (Duke University Press, 1993),
p. 114.
5. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 117.
6. Slavoj Zikek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center
of Political Ontology (London: Verso Books, 1999), p. 196.
7. Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Harvard
University Press, 2001), p. 37.
8. Monika Maurer, Krzysztof Kieslowski (Pocket Essen-
tials, 2000), p. 73.
9. Slavoj Zigek, The Fright of Real Tears: KrzysztofKieslowski Between Theory and Post-Theory (London:
British Film Institute, 2001), p. 73.
10. Kieslowski on Kieslowski, ed. Danusia Stok (London:
Faber and Faber, 1993), p. 194.
11. On the cinema of moral concern, see Boleslaw
Michalek and Frank Turaj, The Modern Cinema of Poland
(Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 59-93.
12. Kieslowski on Kieslowski, p. 79.
13. Kieslowski on Kieslowski, p. 144.
14. See, for example, Maurer, Krzysztof Kieslowski,
p. 42 and Annette Insdorf, Double Lives, Second Chances:
The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski (New York: Hyperion
Books, 1999), p. 74.
15. Zi ek, The Fright of Real Tears, p. 77.
16. Geoff Andrew, The 'Three Colours' Trilogy (London:
British Film Institute Publishing, 1998), p. 19.
17. Jonathan Romney, review of La Double Vie de
Veronique, Sight and Sound 1 (1992): 42-43. Cited in
Andrew, The 'Three Colours' Trilogy, p. 19.
18. Heinrich von Kleist, "On the Puppet Theater," in An
Abyss Deep Enough: Letters of Heinrich von Kleist with a
Selection of Essays and Anecdotes, trans. Philip B. Miller
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982), pp. 211-216.
19. The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans.
Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage International, 1982),
pp. 169, 171.
20. Kieslowski on Kieslowski, p. 175.
21. Slavoj Zi2ek, "In His Bold Gaze My Ruin is Writ
Large," in Everything You Always Wanted to Know about
Lacan But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock, ed. Slavoj Zikek.
(London: Verso Books, 1992), p. 234.
22. RenataSalecl, "TheSilence of FeminineJouissance,"in Cogito and the Unconscious, ed. Slavoj Zikek (Duke
UniversityPress,1998),p. 181.23. Zifek, TheFrightofReal Tears,p. 51.
24. Ibid.25. Kieslowskion Kieslowski,p. 181.26. Zifek, TheFright of Real Tears,p. 169.27. Rainer Maria Rilke, "Doll: On the Wax Dolls of
Lotte Pritzel,"cited in Nelson, The SecretLife of Puppets,
p. 69.28. In an odd little subplotof Double Life, a friend of
Veroniqueasks her to perjureherself duringa divorcepro-ceeding by saying that she had slept with her friend'shus-band. Kieflowski admits that this subplotdoes not fit themood or theme of the rest of the film, but he needed it
because "only the soul existed for [Veronique], only pre-monitions,only a certainmagic."So to bringher "down toearth"he decided to "have her agree...to appear n court,
bear false witness againstsomeone and in this way becomea normal humanbeing again."Kieslowski on Kieslowski,
p. 186. But it seems to me that the scene achieves the oppo-site of what Kieilowski intends.Veroniqueso easily agreesto herfriend'srequestbecause the realmof the law andtheethical arefor herunreal; he moral mperative s not forheranorganof conscience or in anyway constitutiveof herstill
unfinished,girlishpersonality.29. MarcVernet,"TheFetish in the TheoryandHistory
of the Cinema," in Endless Night: Cinema and Psycho-
analysis,ParallelHistories,ed. JanetBergstrom Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1999),p. 93.
30. Reference to this syndromecan be found in Nelson,TheSecretLifeof Puppets,p. 252.
31. Space does not allow me to pursuethis studyof theethicalin Kieilowski's femalecharacters,particularlyn hislast film, Rouge [ThreeColors:Red] (1994). In Red, IreneJacob returns to play the character of a young womannamed Valentine. Valentine represents a new phase of
subjectivity in Veronika-Veronique-Julie.She exhibits anatural moral grace and a Pauline spirit of love in her
dealings with people, qualitiesthat were not presentin theotherwomen.
32. JonathanLear,Happiness,Death, and theRemainder
of Life (HarvardUniversityPress,2000), pp. 112, 115.33. Citation from the screenplay by Krzysztof Kiei-
lowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Three Colours Trilogy:Blue, White,Red, trans. Danusia Stok (London:Faberand
Faber,1998),p. 98.34. Insdorf,DoubleLives,SecondChances,pp. 150-151.35. Zikek,TheFright of Real Tears,p. 175.36. In an interview with Geoff Andrew, The 'Three
Colours'Trilogy,p. 82.