Krzysztof Kieslowski wasn't a filmmaker; he was a miracle worker.
'Red' is the last of his three colours trilogy, the previous being 'Blue' and 'White', representing the ideas of the French flag: equality, fraternity and liberty. His interpretations of these concepts are highly creative, much like his interpretations of the ten commandments in his ten part series 'Dekalog'. 'Red' focuses on fraternity but in quite an unlikely way.
The film follows a young model who shoots chewing gum adverts in the heart of Paris. One day she runs over a dog with her car and decides to find the owner and apologise for the accident. Turning up on the owner's door she finds an old retired judge who is spying on his neighbours and taunts the young model to do something about it.
The young model tries to rectify the situation but finds that she can't and develops a relationship with the old judge. Meanwhile in the opposite block of flats from the young model is a young man who is becoming a judge and whose life mirrors the life of the old judge showing how history repeats itself. The young judge's life shows that however you feel your own life to be tragic it has, somewhat predictably, been lived out before and that nothing in life is truly unique.
Kieslowski is a marvel at finding chance and accident to inform our lives and at the searching task of trying to make sense of life while never quite achieving it is a wonderful form of secular mysticism. Who knows what may happen to us in the future? Who knows why things occur as they do and that happen to us, only to be forgotten in the mists of history.
Kieslowski was the greatest. His films are thought provoking and deeply humane, they are meditations on the nature of life that will reward a lifetime of reflecting. We are all interconnected in ways we couldn't possibly guess and seeing these films will give you a much better appreciating of being alive.
