Auteur Theory in Kieslowskis Trilogy - Essay Example

Your Your The visions of Three Colors: Auteur theory as it applies to Kieslowski's trilogy Auteur theory takes the interesting view that it is a film's director that provides that film's primary personal vision and preoccupations, rather than the scriptwriter, the actors, or the producers. It has been part of the tradition of film commentary since it was first proposed in 1954, by Francois Truffaut, in his essay Une certaine tendance du cinema francais. Perhaps the most oft-quoted opinion from this essay is the idea that "there are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors" (Auteur theory). Truffaut inherited this idea from Andre Bazin, his employer at the Cahiers du cinema. Bazin was a major promoter of such directors as Howard Hawks, Jean Renoir, and Alfred Hitchcock, three directors known for having a common voice, or vision, that winds throughout their respective bodies of work. Another element of auteur theory comes from Alexandre Astruc's concept of the "camera-pen." This refers to the idea that a director should treat the camera like a writer uses a pen, using the medium to put agendas into action, rather than being held captive by a particular script's demands (Auteur theory). In this view, the role of the scriptwriter necessarily becomes increasingly minimal. Auteurism, or film analysis based on the idea of a directorial vision, grew out of his ideas. It spread to the United Kingdom, where the review Movie became its first primary practitioner. In the United States, Andrew Sarris introduced it in his 1962 essay "Notes on the Auteur Theory." Sarris proposed some minimal requirements for a director to be considered an auteur: the director must demonstrate a level of competence in technique, evoke an individual style in terms of how a movie feels and looks, and even terms of overall theme. His work The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968, earned a reputation as the primary text for auteurism (Auteur theory). Auteurism has had its critics. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker objected to the idea of giving the director so much credit for a project that takes so many people to complete - not just the already mentioned scriptwriter, but the cinematographer as well. Also, auteurism can contribute greatly to the costs of making a movie, and directors who develop a record of financial losses will not be able to bring a message of any kind to the big screen (Auteur theory). Also, New Criticism challenged auteur theory with its idea of the "intentional fallacy." This referred to the idea that the words on a page of literature, or the images on a movie screen, are more important than the intentions of the author, or the intentions of the director. Because each viewer will approach a movie with a unique set of experiences and biases, the director's intention may never filter through the images and reach the mind of the viewer. In any discussion of directors who are considered auteurs, the name of Krzysztof Kieslowski comes to the forefront. Ironically, Kieslowski entered the study of film as a sort of detour on his original career path, which involved a desire to become a theater director. It was only when the College for Theater Technicians lacked a program for theater directors that he decided to study film as well (Krzysztof Kieslowski). Sieglohr posited that an auteur will see national identity as ripe fodder for "investigation and excavation" (Hill (Year) p. ). While Three Colors takes a look at the special significance of the three colors of the French flag, Kieslowski's early work took a look, as well, at the Polish national experience. As he studied film more extensively, he decided to make documentaries rather than directing plays. His first projects focused on the daily routines of workers, soldiers, and other citizens. However, even though Kieslowski's intentions were not to make political statements, even his attempts to depict the lives of Polish citizens realistically ran afoul of the censoring authorities in the Polish government. An early example would be the television documentary Workers '71, which portrayed interviews with workers, concerning the reasons behind the mass strikes in 1970. This film did make it to television, but was heavily censored by the government. He decided to abandon documentary filmmaking after his experience with Station (1981). Some of the footage from the film was nearly seized and used as evidence in a criminal trial, and so Kieslowski concluded that it was not possible to portray the truth under the censorship of a totalitarian government (Krzysztof Kieslowski). Three Colors strays slightly from Sieglohr's idea of a concern with strictly national identity, but instead focuses on questions of human identity - in other words, his inquiries are more concerned with issues that are universal to all of humanity. In an interview, Kieslowski wrote that: if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide peopleIf culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things which unite people. It doesn't matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine, it's still the same pain. Feelings are what link people togetherthat's why I tell about these things, because in all other things I immediately find division (Abrahamson). And so Three Colors looks at fraternity, symbolized by the color blue; liberty, by white; and equality, by red. Each movie in the trilogy takes a look at the apparent contradictions between the goals espoused by those lofty words, and how life really works out in practice. Kieslowski argued that Western society has codified the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity by rule of law, but that those ideas have yet to take full root on the individual level. In Three Colors, he claimed that the films were about "individuals who can't quite find their bearings, who don't quite know how to live, who don't really know what's right or wrong and are desperately looking" (Ottenhoff). The first movie in the trilogy was Blue (Liberty). This film centered around a Parisian woman who finds what might be termed an unusual form of liberty, when her husband and daughter die in an automobile accident. She responds by shunning all worldly goods and leaving the famous world that her husband (a composer) had introduced her to, and basically abandoning all forms of human contact. Ultimately, however, what true liberty means, at least according to the film, is a decision to reject that loneliness and isolation. White (Equality) takes a similarly unusual twist on its virtue, giving its main character equality in the sense that, after his divorce, he is able to get even with his estranged wife. One could ask whether revenge is true equality, but the film does ask the valid question of whether or not the equality that revenge brings is worth the price that revenge exacts on its practitioners. Red (Fraternity) asks its viewers what true connection, true brotherhood means. Valentine, a model, runs over an old judge's dog and returns it to him, only to discover that he is a closet eavesdropper. She convinces him to turn himself in, and they spend the movie exploring matters of justice and truth. Red also explores how communication can falter, even in a society where there are seemingly infinite methods to communicate with one another. Messages, meanings, are still missed. There are several commonalities among the three films, both technical and thematic in nature. All three movies use their respective colors in a variety of ways. Red teems with red cars, furniture, coats, bowling balls, even awnings. The fashion world is bathed in red. Blue, for example, has a scene where the protagonist is visiting her mother, and there is an image on television of an older man bungee-jumping from a tower, swimming through the blue air, a parallel image to the protagonist swimming in a pool with blue lights (Ottenhoff). The images in Blue could be analyzed symbolically: both people are in environments that are not bound by constraints, but both people are also completely alone. If there is an issue of national or political identity associated with these films, it is that all three discuss challenges that face the new European Community. In Blue, the protagonist's dead husband had written a song celebrating Europe's new unity that was to be played in twelve European cities at once, and the protagonist questions whether the twelve cities can even cooperate on that level. White highlights the ways in which Eastern Europe has become more open democratically - and more capitalist as well - after the fall of Communism. For better for worse, Eastern Europe has shifted into a world run by unfettered free-market rules. Red focuses on the ways that communication technology has made what was once a large continent a very small place, where one can talk to another countries away just by pulling a phone out of one's pocket. And so Kieslowski's perhaps most famous films come to show, on several levels, basic truths about the human condition, with some consideration for the political questions that were absorbing the European continent at the time when the films came out. On that basis, one could say that these films fit Sieglohr's definition of auteuristic filmmaking. One could also say that Truffaut's ideas about how a director can use the cinema to communicate his or her own personal visions to the world are well exemplified by the events and the techniques used in Three Colors. Works Cited Abrahamson P 1995, "Kieslowski's Many Colors," Oxford University Student, June 2, 1995. Accessed 20 September 2006 online at http://zakka.dk/euroscreenwriters/intervies/krysztof_kieslowski_520.htm. Auteur theory 2006, accessed 20 September 2006 online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur_theory. Krzysztof Kieslowski 2006, accessed 20 September 2006 online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krzysztof_Kieslowski. Ottenhoff J 1996, "Shades of truth: encountering Kieslowski's "Three Colors," Christian Century vol. 113, no. 26. Accessed 20 September 2006 at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_n26_v113/ai_18720691/print. Read More