Cinema and Subjectivity in Krzysztof Kieślowski

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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



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,



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




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




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




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




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




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



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




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.


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.


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.

Cinema and Subjectivity in Krzysztof Kieślowski

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