Trzy kolory: Biały - A Film About Resilience… In All Aspects

The second installment of a color trilogy (Blue, White, & Red) was written, produced, and directed by Polish Krzysztof Kieślowski. It was a modest yet glorious attempt to pay homage to France. While many critics and viewers claim Blanc is the weakest link in the chain, I think that if isolated, it has everything to be viewed as a magnificent offering. A masterpiece, I don’t know, but surely a movie Poland and France can be proud of.

We meet a nervous Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), pacing through the streets of a foreign Paris to him. However we learn he isn’t anxious about that but rather because his wife, Dominique Vidal (Julie Delpy) doesn’t love him anymore and wants a divorce. As she ventures off not looking back, Karol is left with nothing, nothing but a couple of things including a comb, and a napkin, which he used to get money at the subway station. However, he attracts more than just money. A Polish stranger becomes a friend and offers to send him back to Poland. In a series of events that dance between comedy and irony, Karol makes it back to his native land where he returns to be a barber but as a part-time job. He has another full-time job - making her now ex-wife fall in love with him again. Although this is not explicitly mentioned, this is what we come to understand through the running time. Kieślowski curiously aims to tell a tale of these people's lives, not from a raw point of view but rather from a comedic, romantic, and ironic perspective. But because of his purpose, a clear plotline is never set which might set some people off because they never know where the movie is heading, it becomes unpredictable. “Plot twists” isn’t the description I would use; more like “story in motion”. Kieślowski asks for two things in this movie, investment and patience. Investment in its characters and patience in the plotline. Patience rings especially true as the Blue and Red movies exist to complete the trilogy and mesh all the storylines. 

I appreciate the great character built from Kieślowski in that of Karol. As the movie progresses, you can see how he grows and changes but never forgets who he really is, where he comes from, and who he loves. After managing to create wealth for himself, he still helps his brother with the barber, his Polish friend with a “job”, and romanticizes moments with his ex-wife. All of the above, he would have done even at his lowest point back in the Parisian subway station. That’s why I rooted for Karol, he seems genuine and real; like an actual Polish person I would meet. Stone cold to some extent but soft and warm also and thanks to the great acting and writing, this was achieved.

Personally, Blanc comes like a breath of fresh air, like the perfume Dominique would wear. The editing and sound design look and feel polished. I personally found fascinating the camera angles and how well-structured they were. I found incredible depth in the close-ups of people's faces, their shoes; and even random items like a suitcase, a coin, and a telephone. I felt so personal that I felt I was seeing those things with my own eyes; essentially immersed in the natural flow of things in the storyline and that’s precisely the ultimate goal of Kieślowski; to narrate a story with no clear start and finish but with curves and pits that their characters go through. It’s as if we are seeing what they are seeing, feeling what they are feeling, and doing what they are doing, all in real-time yet rarely having a dull moment and keeping the atmosphere of the film highly engaging, suspenseful, and dramatic.