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We discuss the winner of our Patron Poll, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Double Life of Veronique - A new film to both Hit Factory hosts, and one that has become an instant favorite.
Enigmatic, ethereal, and steeped in a gentle magical realism, the film finds ways to make grand the quotidian and the interior emotional plane of existence, transcending attempts to articulate its power and majesty with mere words.
We discuss the brilliant Irène Jacob, whose dual performance as Weronika and Veronique communicates an entire world of feeling with her eyes, and we ask if this is perhaps the most beautiful anyone has ever been onscreen. Then, we make meaning of the film's many distinct totems of symbolism - refracted images, melodies, marionettes, and their significance as links not just to the film's two protagonists, but to the imperceptible bond between all people. Finally, we discuss director Kieślowski’s initial plan to release hundreds of slightly different iterations of the film in various theaters across the globe, and how the film's subtle graces are made more meaningful by their potential absence.
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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.
It's not a movie that, like films of the French New Wave, which you mentioned already, is one that is specifically trying to draw attention to artifice or to the nature of cinema. It's actually a profoundly immersive film and one that walks a very fine line. It's this very delicate balancing act that's happening here of evoking something interior about existence and emotionality that is really, really hard to articulate. And so the film doesn't, but somehow manages to get you to think about it constantly. And I don't, I don't really know how you happen upon that, except just by being an artist with like incredible, like, preternatural instincts for this sort of thing and shooting all of this and building in an edit, you know, this sort of rhythm and scope of what the film is doing. There's a really fascinating quote from Koslowski in an interview with Denouche Stolk is the name of this person. And this quote also is featured in an essay by Jonathan Romney for the Criterion Edition of this film. But Koslowski says, "The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film." And I think that that is a beautiful and extremely revealing comment on the nature of the movie and sort of what he's getting at here. And it would feel trite, it would feel coy if it was coming from a filmmaker, or if it was about a film that didn't do this as masterfully as it does. But it really feels that way. Like, it's almost like, it's imperceptible, like how it does exactly what it's doing. It's this like weird alchemy. There's like this strange sort of like impermanence to all of it. And I don't know, it just, it feels like after you've watched it, it feels like you watched and witnessed a dream. And I just, I think it's so gorgeous. Again, I'm having trouble like exactly articulating what it is because to emphasize it too much or to articulate it too specifically feels like it's in danger of almost like pulling it apart and destroying some of the magic of it. But I don't think you can with this. It's really just a movie that I can say to our listeners who maybe haven't seen it or even those who have that, there's nothing like this. And there's no way to, I think, thoroughly describe in words what the sensation of watching this movie is like. I think it will be distinct. And I think it will be profound for each person in their own ways, depending on who they are and where they are when they come to it. I think this film is like one of those pieces of art that is greater than the sum of its parts. Like, I think Koslowski is able to achieve something that feels difficult to achieve in terms of like communicating all of these things that he says are like the most impossible things to film and that you can't film them. I think he's able to achieve that because he's, he's like doing this collaging. He's adding all of these different images and sounds and exchanges and sort of stitching them together and they're making something together. But separately you're like, oh, that's just like a lady with a shoelace or that's just like a guy at a table or whatever. And it's like the order of the images, it's the colors, it's the sounds. It's like, it is like the totality of everything that makes it into this new thing that is not the sum of all of those disparate images and shots. And it's really remarkable. Like, I don't know how someone conceives of this and is able to make something that like I could never imagine and yet is like wholly intelligible to me. Like, I watch it and I'm like, I understand what's happening, I think, even though no one's telling me, the film isn't really telling me, but like, it's creating a sense of knowing in me that like affirms that I understand what I'm seeing and feeling. And I think that it's because the movie in this, you know, sort of like magical ability that Kasovsky has to evoke something that doesn't even really exist on screen, but somehow does in the succession of images that he's showing you, is something that like, we all have inside of us, which is as corny as it sounds, like, I think a really deep belief that there is like magic in the universe. And that like, there is something mystical that exists even in ordinary things. If like, we're willing and able to sort of like, feel something guttural, you know, like something that doesn't exist on the surface of like, our day to day interactions, but then like, becomes all we feel in our day to day interactions and all we see in the banalities of our day to day life. I believe that like, all of us sort of have a natural desire to believe in that. And some people, I think, are closer to that desire than others. And I think this movie is tapping into that. I think that this film is tapping into this sort of innate understanding that there is electricity running through and across things and people that have ostensibly no connection to one another, other than this like, mystical electricity that exists. Like, you know, we're all literally made of stars, right? And like, I just, I have to believe that that matters. You know, like, I have to believe that that means something. And I think that's what this film is like working with. I don't, it sounds insane and it sounds like so corny and like pun intended starry-eyed, but like, I really do think that that's what this movie is about. But I think that that's the magic of the film is that like, as you're watching it, it manages to like disarm you and bring down your defenses against it and you're more kind of like analytical approaches to the film and manages to like be with you and and just leave you totally entranced. It's it's funny too, because like Koslowski is Polish. And so like, obviously, there is a very, well, say there's a not insignificant influence of the Catholic church in Poland. And before he did Veronique, before he does three colors, he made a television mini series called Decalogue, which is based on the 10 Commandments. It's 10 one hour films. This is available through Criterion Collection. You can find it. It's very long. I've not seen any of them, but they exist. And so I was thinking about this, you know, with this film versus just the fact that the Decalogue is based on the 10 Commandments and what I know of his other work later on in three colors, where there is a similar sense of, I'll call it the supernatural in three colors, but it has to me when I watch them, something that feels distinctly more theological. And it's not ever named as like, you know, God or like the Christian God, but it has a more sort of like terrestrial and compartmentalized way in which it acts upon the characters and which in which like divinity seems to like factor in here. I think it totally excused that in favor of something far less like tangible and decipherable to the characters and to us. It really does feel to me. And I think we actually both made this comparison. We were kind of like talking about this last night after we had watched the film. There's a lot about this that has a sort of fantasy or like magical realism quality to it that in certain moments had me thinking about Guillermo del Toro's work, specifically his Spanish language films, like when he's at his most complex and also his most like subtle and subdued when it comes to like how he's weaving his sort of fantasy elements into his into his movies. But this film never quite boils over into that like fantasy realm. It always still feels incredibly familiar, incredibly quotidian and terrestrial. And it's just these little flickers and flourishes of mysticism. and somehow that makes it more profound to me.
