Red is an evocative colour, perhaps the most evocative of the three used in Kieslowski’s Three Colours Trilogy; it is spread throughout the film, tables, curtains, jumpers even bubble gum is painted in deep dark sensual red. It brings to mind heat, lust, rage, death, but perhaps most predominantly, love.

A commonly held view is that Three Colours White (1994) is the weakest in the trilogy, the film that failed to achieve a comparable level of quality to Three Colours Blue (1993) or Three Colours Red (1994). Part of me wishes to offer a controversial and perhaps revelatory re-assessment of the films quality, maybe even going so far as to claim that Three Colours White is the misunderstood centrepiece that outstrips its counterparts in every sense that matters. Unfortunately I am stifled by the facts.

Liberty, equality, fraternity. The national motto of France since the 1789 revolution, institutionalised during the third republic in 1870, is the inspiration for one of the greatest film trilogies ever produced and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s cinematic swan song. As with the miraculous television series Dekalog four years earlier, Kieslowski and long time screenwriting collaborator Krzysztof Piesiewicz drew their inspiration from a set of socially ingrained and long held principles.

1976 saw the start of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s fiction film career, although he’d directed documentaries and television productions during the preceding decade, The Scar, represented his first venture in this most coveted of creative artistic positions. The Scar was one of two films Kieslowski directed in the 1970s, the other was Camera Buff released in 1979.

Often the topic of genre is neglected in relation to the works of Poland’s greatest director, probably because the majority of Kieslowski’s films are difficult to categorise. From his first feature film The Scar to his last Three Colours Red, there is no one film that fits any particular genre except the broader categorisation of these films as “dramas” which is unhelpful in such matters as that term includes the widest range of films possible.

His fourth feature film as director is part ghost story, part political drama, but at all times - a Kieslowski film.

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 Kieslowski series continues, this time examining his 1991 masterpiece and arguably greatest feature film, a study of the invisible connections between human beings.

Continuing on from the Left Field Cinema analysis of episodes one to five of this television masterpiece. This edition will examine the second half of the series that Stanley Kubrick once described as the only masterpiece he could name that was filmed in his lifetime.

Part two of two tackling a mini-series of ten one-hour films each examining one of the ten commandments, this edition of Left Field Cinema looks at the second five episodes, and tries to clarify what makes the second half of this ten hour masterpiece so compelling.