Precious Bodily Fluids

Category: Polish Film

  • The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991)

    The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991)

    Called by Joe Kickasola, “Kieslowski’s great formal experiment,” this one features consistent shots of abstraction both at the levels of both form and content. The tilted and upside-down shots formally renew the spectator’s perspective, along with rich and ever-shifting color schemes. Parallel shots (from Weronika, then later from Veronique) of older women walking with difficulty…

  • Viewing Log, Week of 8/12/2012 (Vol. II)

    Mouchette (dir. Robert Bresson, 1967) – And that completes half of Bresson’s oeuvre. Still need to see the first two and the last four. Mouchette contains many clear similarities with Au hasard Balthazar, released only a couple years prior. They’re both about cruelty in the world and the resulting tragedy when cruelty singles out and…

  • Viewing Log, Week of 8/5/2012 (Vol. I)

    The Passion of Joan of Arc (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) – Paul Schrader calls this a key example of the “transcendental style in film,” from his book by that name. There’s certainly a kind of experience that the filmmaker wants the audience to have, and perhaps Schrader defines his terms shrewdly enough to label…

  • Quickies, Vol. XXXI

    The Double Life of Véronique (1991, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski) – A film that continues to challenge and provoke. Struck this time around by the very immanent nature of Kieslowski’s transcendence. Zizek thinks Kieslowski finds “God” a cosmic sadist (to use C.S. Lewis’ term), a rather mean child who toys with his creation for his own…

  • Quickies, Vol. XXII

    Duplicity (dir. Tony Gilroy, 2009) – Refreshing and helpful to see this one for the first time since the big screen. What stands out now is how it turns on its head the traditional caper movie, something that Gilroy was probably only too glad to do after penning the Bourne stuff. So what this amounts…

  • The Double Life of Véronique

    While it would normally seem a travesty, a horrid injustice to submit a “great formal experiment” like Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Véronique to a(n) mundane/inane critical medium such as this, it is comforting to know that the great Pole would have likely smiled upon it. With a deep understanding of and affinity for…

  • Man of Marble

    Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru) is defined by discourse of the most cinematic kind, both extra- and intra-. The true-story based documentary couched in the narrative of this fiction film follows the search for the lost icon – Mateusz Birkut – of the lost cause – the worker in all his glory…

  • Knife in the Water

    Polanski’s archetypal art house film is reminiscent of Antonioni’s L’avventura with a bit of that Bruce Willis movie Bandits thrown in. Low camera angles, human foregrounding, and the constant sound of swishing water lend an eerie immanence to the film, which in effect divides the proverbial man into his two halves: brains and brawn. The…

  • Quickies, Vol. I

    When there’s no time for thinking, let alone writing, time will be made for quickies. Gran Torino (dir. Clint Eastwood): Great, small movie. Eastwood is a competent director and as an actor, no one plays him better than himself. Has been called everything between “a sleeper hit” and “Dirty Old Man Harry.” Anyone remotely attached…

  • Decalogue VI

    It isn’t hard to imagine Krzysztof Kieslowski responding to an accusation that his films might be overly transcendent or unreal by employing one of the most common and, indeed, self-reflexive cinematic tropes: that of the gaze. The nice thing about the gaze is that there is a world of clichés to work with, particularly the…

  • Trois Couleurs: Bleu

  • The Decalogue, IV-V

    The Decalogue IV Despite the more obvious fact that this episode of Kieslowski’s Decalogue is themed around the commandment “You shall honor your father and your mother,” I will refrain from inserting the commandments next to the episode headings as I did in the first post. As Kieslowski scholar Joseph Kickasola observes, Kieslowski himself doesn’t…