Left Field Cinema

Fading in on an image of a city at twilight, something becomes immediately apparent - the world is upside down. The street lights are stars; the clouds below are a large hazy fog which covers the ground. This seemingly innocuous opening image is filled with mystery, magic and suspense simply on account of being the wrong way up. We then cut to a young child, she to lies upside down, staring out of the window. The opening image is from her perspective, a child’s perspective where the most basic of manoeuvres can endow the world with uncertainty - up becomes down, down becomes up. Kieslowski invites us to join the curious world of Veronique and Weronika, an offer quite frankly too intoxicating to refuse.

This is a film to two halves, or more appropriately a third and two thirds. We start with Weronika, a Polish choir singer who balances her love life with the pursuit of a professional singing career. Weronika feels that she’s not alone in the world, not in the sense of having friends or family, but instead a transient and elusive connection with someone she’s never met. One day a political demonstration erupts into riot and a group of French tourists are hurried away from the disturbances, amongst them is Veronique a teacher from France, Veronique is herded onto the tourist bus but not before Weronika briefly sees her. Veronique is an exact doppelganger of Weronika, although both come from different nations and are worlds apart they are the same person. The plot radically switches direction around half an hour in and moves the action to Veronique in France. She becomes obsessed with a puppeteer who performs at the school she works for. The puppeteer leaves her cryptic clues hoping that Veronique will follow them up and find him. The film is difficult to surmise because of its unorthodox approach, but the themes of invisible connections between human beings are clear from the outset. The Double Life of Veronique is unique because it sinks or swims based on the individuals connection to the material, on the individual immersion in the world of the film. You might feel that all films are this way, but in reality most films are driven by a clear narrative and tangible or corporeal elements that ensure audience involvement because of how clearly drawn they are. The Double Life of Veronique however operates within an entirely different framework, the emphasis is on mood and atmosphere, the conjuring Kieslowski is continually attempting here is transcendental. This is an anti-Cartesian outlook on cinema, nothing is fundamental, nothing is certain, despite operating in a reality that is familiar, the commonly accepted rules of existence do not apply. This subtly alternative reality is boldly presented through the visual splendour of the film. One of the worlds greatest cinematographers Slowamir Idziak worked on the film, Idziak is best known from his work on Kieslowski films such as Three Colours Blue and A Short Film About Killing, here he employs very bold and clearly artificial green lighting, with twinges of orange and yellow, creating a warm, yet other worldly atmosphere. As a precursor to The Three Colours Trilogy, this could well make up the fourth film in that collection with Green as it’s significant visual reference (of course the Three Colours Trilogy make up the French flag and this would spoil matters, it is just a point of observation that the films are unified in their deliberate and distinct colour schemes). Idziak figuratively paints with light, in this strange world shot through strange distorted lens, a fish-eyed sex scene is a perfect example, as bed side lamp lies on the floor and Veronique switches it on and off. Such a simple action seems detached from our reality by virtue of the manner it has been shot and the horizontal positioning of the lamp on Veronique’s floor. Another sequence which sees Weronika staring at the distortion caused by an imperfection in train window. The distorted views and bold lighting are not merely gimmickry, as with the films opening images, perspective is crucial to understanding this film – perspective is everything. Kieslowski considered this the first film of his made in the “West”, for some this might seem hard to fathom as Poland is so readily accessible to those of us who live within the EU, but twenty-years ago this was not the case, even with the move to France and all the extra-budgetary and financial concerns which came with this move, Kieslowski still kept one foot in his native Poland and makes no concessions to his deliberately ambiguous style.

The Double Life of Veronique is a film that pays a huge amount of attention to seemingly minor details. Be it Veronique’s scarf dragging across the floor or a tea bag rotating in a glass of hot water as the sunlight illuminates the content as if it were liquid gold. Great film making, it would seem, is in the details. In one scene Weronika is briefly confronted by a Flasher in the street as she struggles to breath, the Flasher continues on his way as if exposing his genitals is nothing extraordinary, this surprising yet seemingly irrelevant moment does tie into several of the films themes, Veronique and Weronika express themselves through their respective art forms, the flasher expresses himself through unveiling himself to strangers in the street; Veronique and Weronika are strangers to each other but share a connection beyond earthly means, the Flasher and Weronika are also strangers, but through his actions they to now hold a tentative connection. Some of this film’s random occurrences serve more pragmatic concerns, for example a subplot about Veronique agreeing to testify against her friends partner in court, although Kieslowski felt this strand was undeveloped and cut back most of the content he kept a little of it in place because it did serve a greater purpose, as Kieslowski put it the subplot ‘pulled Veronique down to earth’ by bearing false witness against the husband she is anchored in our reality rather than a girl ‘forever in the clouds’. Subplots are started and then just as quickly dropped. The subplots make it easier to relate to both women, there is an intensity to both Weronika and Veronique which is never explained but is clearly present, both women are like tightly coiled springs, there is a sexual tension within both Weronika and Veronique at all times, it manifests itself in moments of idiosyncratic behaviour, both women wrapping a cord around their finger so tight that it detaches from whatever was holding it. This detail works on more than one level, as well as further connecting Veronique and Weronkia, the shoelace alludes to their problems with their hearts, like an ECG monitor - when the line goes straight the heart has stopped beating.

Both women hold an unorthodox attitude towards the world and their existence, Weronika allows dust to fall on her face like it was rain, when the heavens open she allows herself to be drenched as others run away. These incidents which others would repel from, Veronique and Weronika embrace. The similarities between them do not end there, both women have close relationships with their fathers; both women have passionate affairs with cryptic young men. Both are artists. The connections between them are amplified through deliberate filming choices, at two points both women break the fourth wall and stare directly into the camera, without the camera representing someone else’s’ perspective. These are not Point of View images, they are not mistakes, they are very brief but deliberate looks which increase the shared experience of both women.

As with a number of Kieslowski’s films there is a political dimension to the content; but unlike A Short Film About Killing, for example, the politics is contextual rather than agenda driven. During the aforementioned a political demonstration and subsequent riot when Weronika sees her double, Veronique is getting on a tourist bus and taking snap shots of the carnage. Veronique as a French national and tourist is recalled to safety and the luxury of her Parisian life style, whist Weronika is stuck in post cold war Poland, where communist statues are being removed from public areas and protests boil over into violence. Here Kieslowski is making the most of the new political environment, there is little geographical difference between Poland and France, only Germany sits between them, there is little difference between Veronique and Weronika only a few hundred miles sit between them and yet that divide means everything. It’s of interest as The Double Life of Veronique was in production just after the political landscape of Europe radically changed, post the collapse of the Berlin wall, the lives of Polish people changed. The national relationship between the people of France and the people of Poland is key to understanding The Double Life of Veronique and in this sense the film is an exercise in proxemics. Kieslowski spoke of this a great deal, not that his film making style changed significantly by moving to France, the films budget may have been greater than previous projects but the content never balloons in any significant way. But the West were more concerned with how to sell the film, how to make money from it, where as previously in Poland the money was not an object, the film was it’s own reward, good or bad, right or wrong – finance now played a role in Kieslowski’s world, but a role that became largely insignificant as Kieslowski ignored it and let the businessmen sort out the business side. Just so long as people did not interfere with the work - he was happy.

Indeed very little changed from one socio-political context to the next, except more international settings in Kieslowski’s work (he would also make Three Colours Red in Switzerland) you can not tell without looking at the production years when this change came. Kieslowski retained many of his key production crew members, as mentioned already Slawomir Idziak, but also his first choice of composers Zbigniew Preisner who here reaches his musical zenith. As much as the film relies on stunning imagery it owes an equal debt to Preisner’s music. The concert sequence which ends the Polish section of the film features a haunting piece of music which by itself enters the pantheon of classic soundtracks. The scene itself mixes “Point of View” images and third person perspectives (a trademark in Kieslowski’s work since his 1981 film Blind Chance). The visuals match the stunning soundtrack; beauty, danger, grandeur, mystery and pure emotion are over riding pleasures in Preisner’s score. Crucially, where other films which feature music lead narratives often borrow their music from the great composers of years past, Preisner composes his own symphonies for the diegetic soundscapes of the film, he does the same in Dekalog Episode 09 and Three Colours Blue. What is most remarkable this choice is that his music stands up to the scrutiny of the audience, we don’t doubt that the music being played and the songs being sung have existed for years before the films narratives began, but in actual fact they are completely original works.

Irene Jacob plays both Veronique and Weronika in the film, this was one of her earliest roles and at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five at the time of production she is very young. Although Kieslowski at first wanted to cast Andie MacDowell in the role, he later acknowledged that this would have been a mistake and that the French would have been offended at him not using a French actor for the part. Kieslowski described the French as having a strong sense of national identity and attributed this to the animosity they would have felt had MacDowell been in the lead. Interestingly Kieslowski felt that in this sense the French were not unlike the British, he joked that both nations feel that the other is full of idiots but they’re effectively the same with a deep rooted sense of national identity. Jacob would later return for Kieslowksi’s final film, taking the lead female part in Three Colours Red; what she lacked in age, she made up for in a seemingly effortless performance, bringing a romantic and sexual yet paradoxically innocent and vulnerable charm to the film.

The puppets are another point of interest in the film; they work both as a plot device and as an extended metaphor. In the central puppet performance, the puppet dances and collapses in the same way as Weronika does at the fatal concert. The puppet performance is unorthodox and at odds with the traditional approach, it is a particular technique that the puppeteer, Bruce Schwartz is known for, deliberately exposing the puppeteers hands and making the hands part of the performance. But what is more memorable in this scene than the performance is that whilst the whole audience watches the puppets, Veronique instead watches the puppeteer backstage. In that moment she falls in love, we can see it in her eyes as Jacob again conveys a deep-seated longing and captures the most difficult of emotions to convey on the big screen – love. Her search for the puppeteer is a precursor to the French film Amelie, in many respects the films share similar plots and similar protagonists. Veronique listens to a cryptic audio recording and tries to work out where they were made. When she eventually finds the puppeteer they share a moment in café together. The rug is pulled from under Veronique and she realises that that she’s been manipulated and used. It is a beautiful scene which reminds us of how emotionally invested we are in Veronique’s journey. This is shortly followed by the films emotional climax as pain, longing, desire, confusion, realisation, lust, love, pleasure and fear come together in the films splendidly complex and serendipitous conclusion. Kieslowski describes the film as pure emotion and defended his approach to the films content, asking what else he has to play with except pure emotion?

The Double Life of Veronique is Kieslowski’s only masterpiece that is not part of something larger than itself. For example A Short Film About Killing, Three Colours Blue and Three Colours Red are parts of a TV series and thematic trilogy respectively. But The Double Life of Veronique stands apart and by itself. Whether this influenced the later works of David Lynch is unknown, but in Lynch’s worm hole, time shifting doppelganger filled worlds, there are similarities which can not be denied. In Kieslowski’s picture, the reasons why there are two women who are physically and emotionally alike is never explained – nor need it be. The difference is that whilst Lynch operates within an entirely fantastic framework, Kieslowski instead blends magic and reality as with Blind Chance, No End and Three Colours Red in particular - this is what Kieslowski does better than any of his peers – past or present.

M.Dawson