A festival of subtlest emotions; a gentle dive into innermost depths of soul's yearnings; a magical gaze into invisible and intuitive. Glimpses of eternity; life, death, mystique, spirituality, romance, art; darkness, light, reflections, shadows; echos, silence, music. A slight brush of the flapping of the soul's invisible wings; a glance at the spirit's fine and delicate contours; a peek at its mystical, miraculous and metaphysical silhouette.
Sublime cinema!
The Double Life Of Véronique is the creative pinnacle of Kieslowski's otherwise extraordinary rich career. This majestic film is a festive celebration of the wizardry of unrestrained, ingenious film-making, a showcase for singular quality of cinema as a collaborative art form. The film's steady, always radiant yet subtle energy, is a magic flow of transcendental forces, a wide river which makes artificial boundaries between two countries, Poland and France - between Weronica and Véronique - irrelevant and obsolete.
Véronique opens with an exterior shot of a Polish choir girl; her gaze lifted towards heavens, her angelic voice soaring as the spring downpour disperses the rest of the choir girls. A living angel singing an ode to the creator, a gifted girl celebrating the majesty of living. That's what artists are put on Earth to do - aspire to heavens.
La Double Vie De Véronique is a reflection of Kieslowskie's deep artistic longings, a mirror reflecting his most intimate film aspirations. The film was made during the crucial time in his life, the time of revolutionary upheaval - the lifting of the iron curtain; the time, also, of his moving to France from his native Poland.
The character of Polish Weronika and her mirror image, French Véronique, are composites of the artist's soul, the embodiment of his artistic strivings.
Supremely gifted with angelic soprano, Weronika is the artist's Polish alter ego. Her heart condition is a poetic metaphor of the fractured soul of an artist behind the iron curtain witnessing the collapse of the old world. Weronika's final demise is symbolic of the passing of an era and Kieslowski's eventual leaving his native Poland.
There has always been a dynamic duality within hearts and souls of eastern European artists. Constrained by the rigor and dogma of the totalitarian ideology, the artist's domestic roots and artistic inspirations were in constant conflict with the longing for the western freedom of expression and unrestrained creativity.
Véronique, a music teacher, is Weronika's body-double and, symbolically, Kieslowski's French incarnation. She is introduced in an erotic scene that surprisingly leaves the French copy of Polish Weronika saddened and melancholic. As the film moves from Poland-set first act to modern day Paris, we find Véronique feeling a strange sense of loss, a vague sensation that a part of her had mysteriously disappeared.
In an early scene in Poland, Weronika takes a note of a passing truck hauling an upright statue of Lenin. It is the time of turmoil, the time of sweeping, historic changes taking place.
The old Poland of the Kieslowskie's young, formative years is swept away by the course of history - forever gone. A heartfelt loss that an immigrant artist in a foreign country feels deeper than any other human being. Véronique's heart condition is symbolic of an uprooted artist's heartache - the pain for the things which a person leaving his country irrevocably looses. Véronique's search for the identity and whereabouts of her secret admirer through the maze of urbane Paris, is a primal quest mirroring Kieslowskie's own search for artistic identity and recognition in the new, unknown, more challenging foreign terrain.
The original soundtrack composed by master composer Zbigniew Prieznev compliments every aspect of the film to an extent that its haunting score becomes an integrated narrative element and its melodies turn into magical strings connecting the two women.
Genre-defying, as many European movies are, the films effortlessly crosses various cinematic terrains. This is a genuine masterpiece that will forever remain the finest achievement of the late 20th century European cinema.
On another level altogether, this majestic metaphysical thriller could be viewed as the first cinematic acknowledgment of the validity of the string theory of the universe.
Sublime cinema!
The Double Life Of Véronique is the creative pinnacle of Kieslowski's otherwise extraordinary rich career. This majestic film is a festive celebration of the wizardry of unrestrained, ingenious film-making, a showcase for singular quality of cinema as a collaborative art form. The film's steady, always radiant yet subtle energy, is a magic flow of transcendental forces, a wide river which makes artificial boundaries between two countries, Poland and France - between Weronica and Véronique - irrelevant and obsolete.
Véronique opens with an exterior shot of a Polish choir girl; her gaze lifted towards heavens, her angelic voice soaring as the spring downpour disperses the rest of the choir girls. A living angel singing an ode to the creator, a gifted girl celebrating the majesty of living. That's what artists are put on Earth to do - aspire to heavens.
La Double Vie De Véronique is a reflection of Kieslowskie's deep artistic longings, a mirror reflecting his most intimate film aspirations. The film was made during the crucial time in his life, the time of revolutionary upheaval - the lifting of the iron curtain; the time, also, of his moving to France from his native Poland.
The character of Polish Weronika and her mirror image, French Véronique, are composites of the artist's soul, the embodiment of his artistic strivings.
Supremely gifted with angelic soprano, Weronika is the artist's Polish alter ego. Her heart condition is a poetic metaphor of the fractured soul of an artist behind the iron curtain witnessing the collapse of the old world. Weronika's final demise is symbolic of the passing of an era and Kieslowski's eventual leaving his native Poland.
There has always been a dynamic duality within hearts and souls of eastern European artists. Constrained by the rigor and dogma of the totalitarian ideology, the artist's domestic roots and artistic inspirations were in constant conflict with the longing for the western freedom of expression and unrestrained creativity.
Véronique, a music teacher, is Weronika's body-double and, symbolically, Kieslowski's French incarnation. She is introduced in an erotic scene that surprisingly leaves the French copy of Polish Weronika saddened and melancholic. As the film moves from Poland-set first act to modern day Paris, we find Véronique feeling a strange sense of loss, a vague sensation that a part of her had mysteriously disappeared.
In an early scene in Poland, Weronika takes a note of a passing truck hauling an upright statue of Lenin. It is the time of turmoil, the time of sweeping, historic changes taking place.
The old Poland of the Kieslowskie's young, formative years is swept away by the course of history - forever gone. A heartfelt loss that an immigrant artist in a foreign country feels deeper than any other human being. Véronique's heart condition is symbolic of an uprooted artist's heartache - the pain for the things which a person leaving his country irrevocably looses. Véronique's search for the identity and whereabouts of her secret admirer through the maze of urbane Paris, is a primal quest mirroring Kieslowskie's own search for artistic identity and recognition in the new, unknown, more challenging foreign terrain.
The original soundtrack composed by master composer Zbigniew Prieznev compliments every aspect of the film to an extent that its haunting score becomes an integrated narrative element and its melodies turn into magical strings connecting the two women.
Genre-defying, as many European movies are, the films effortlessly crosses various cinematic terrains. This is a genuine masterpiece that will forever remain the finest achievement of the late 20th century European cinema.
On another level altogether, this majestic metaphysical thriller could be viewed as the first cinematic acknowledgment of the validity of the string theory of the universe.