The Double Life of Veronique (1991, France/Poland, Krystof Kieslowski)
Wherein Ben and I differ on the relative merits of Kieslowski's first post-Cold War feature.
Ben Begins:
It's probably too bad that I didn't have the energy to write this review last night immediately after watching TDLOV. Last night I liked it considerably less than I do this morning, so we could have had a better disagreement. Nevertheless, I hope to nit pick enough to bug you. Before I attempt this, however, I will have to acknowledge what is obviously excellent about the film.
It is a terrible shame that Kieslowski is no longer alive making films, of course. One of the less profound but still wonderful aspects of his art, especially in his last "French" phase, is his devotion to young, beautiful, complex female characters and the young beautiful, talented actresses who inhabit these roles. Maybe I am just a stupid, horny, old guy and I hope it is not simply sexist of me, but it seems to me that Kieslowski honestly does require these women to function as his Muse. Sure, TDLOV and the colour trilogy are erotic, sometimes very. But not in some crass way and this is not just because the eroticism is presented in a worthwhile context and the style coming off everything is so intense. That would be to validate the eroticism but placing it in something bigger than itself and while this validation is fine, at the same time I feel that there is already substance in the eroticism itself. This is what I mean by the Muse. These gorgeous gals and their emotional journeys are not pornographically objectified but rather standing in for the director's own subjectivity. He's speaking through them, or letting them speak for him, if you prefer. Hey, maybe there are radical feminists who would disagree. As far as I can see, though, these characters are empowered with agency, emotional fibre and true intelligence. One thing is for sure, Kieslowski is the George Cukor of European cincema insofar as he uses the camera to make women look more than merely beautiful. They are as sensuously tactile as two-dimensional images can be.
Related to this but far beyond it, the intense style of everything already mentioned. This is more than just cinematography but dialectially I maintain that it ultimately comes down to but one aspect of the cinematography, not the use of light in general but instead the selection of colour in particular. Kieslowski is explicit about this in the final trilogy but it is already happening in TDLOV, which I would call "Green." There is much yellow at work as well but this is elementary in relation to fabricating green. I don't want to exaggerate this interpretation. My intention is simply to point to the committment in the film to a colour, associated with a dramatic mood, associated with a psychological state, associated with an existential circumstance. Hummnn... maybe I DO mean to exaggerate this interpretation. I should indicate that this exaggeration is exactly the difference between how I felt last night and how I feel this morning about the film. Last night I grasped that the shimmering quality of the images in TDLOV was due to the use of color and this quality struck me as dangerously close to Malick; you know, what I take to be eye-candy visuals. Clearly, I recovered from this false impression. Be this as it may and turning away now from color in particular to the cinematography in general, TDLOV is possibly Kieslowski's most stunning picture. (Naturally, I would have to revisit the others you've shown me and visit all the others I've never seen.) Some of the framing, camera angles and lens distortions are absolutely arresting. And all of these tricks serve the atmosphere which in turn serves the story, especially the double-images produced through the train window, the marble, mirrors, window panes and so on. TDLOV is an extremely good-looking affair.
That's enough drooling. What about that story everything is serving? Well, I have to say it's pretty darn B-flat. It's your basic doppelganger premise given superficial investigation. As far as I can reckon, this premise is available for exploration along essentially three lines. One: a metaphysical line in keeping with folk-tales about twin ghosts and such. Two: an alter-ego line in keelping with psychoanalysis, which can be taken in the direction of either normal or abnormal psychology; i.e., everyday wackiness or mental illness. And three: an empirical line in keeping with fact-bound science, which can be taken in the direction of either a mystery-debunking detective plot or a technological-replication science fiction plot. TDLOV does not puruse any of these options with narrative rigour. It's a wishy-washy mess. I've already stated that for a minute I thought the style of the thing was like Malick a la Days of Heaven. Just for a minute. Now I have to announce that for a second I thought the concept of the thing was like Lynch a la (sigh) Mulholland Drive. Just for a second. The second has passed but I still maintain that TDLOV does amount to mostly smoke and mirrors.
That it is not just smoke and mirrors I know mainly by reading TDLOV as a chapter in Kieslowski's whole career. He moves away from governenment imposed documentation to realism permitting personal expression to an individual style with its own reference points of meaning. While this aesthetic development does not purely parallel movement away from statist ideology to democratic values to art for art sake, the fit is close enough. In the "French" films, the art for art's sake Kieslowski pursues has it's eye on private experience and only the most intimate social relations. After the political project has officially failed, the hardcore philosophic probing of the Decalogue occurs and this is, for me, the man's masterpiece. The last period is almost unabashedly romantic; hence, the erotic dimension I addressed earlier and the quasi-mystical tone I identify now.
As you know, I have a low tolerance for mysticism but I can get with the program in art if it is clear that it has been earned; not just picked off the self-help shelf but choosen desperately by those abandoned by religion. I list Kieslowski among the latter. Neither communism nor catholicism is working for him, so I appreciate his spiritual longing and I think it reverberates in his aesthetic. But this is no excuse for shoddy writing. Again, the narrative in TDLOV is weak and this is not to be critically salvaged in terms of groovy ambiguity, itself the excuse for vaguely implied mysticism. At the end of the day, the RELATION between Veronique and her double is unclear, and not in a devastatingly meaningful way as it is in Bergman's Persona. It's sorta jive.
And speaking of weaknesses in the script, a couple of scenes scream out for attention. She is in the home of her colleague and asks her if she remembers the plot of the puppet show the school saw that week or the name of the puppeteer. Her colleague professes ignorance only to reconsruct some knowledge like a crime-solver, eventually retrieving the book written by the puppeteer and on which the puppet show was based - from between a pillow and the cheek of her sleeping daughter. How lame! Here we see a retreat from magical connections to dull coincidence; a failure to commit to mystical enchantment which, ironically, comes off as less realistic, well, less believable at least.
The same problem happens to an even more severe degree near the end of the film, almost undermining the whole affair. She is a supposedly typical female, with a purse cluttered with stuff about which she keeps no account. She dumps out the contents for the puppeteer and he find a contact sheet of photographs she took while on a tourist trip to Poland and elsewhare. Of couse, we know all about this, dramatic irony ahoy, but she is completely startled when he points out to her that she has photographed herself. That she would not have studied the contact sheet as soon as she received it from the printer upon returning from her vacation, that she would not have noticed herself instantly in the picture she took - this is patently incredible. Why the lame writing? Because we are to understand that she is only now facing her double. No doubt, this is intended to give the film a climax but this grande finale violates everything that has preceeded it. She can't have some sudden epiphany of recognition because the heart of the mysticism - repeated at various points in the film - is that she always "knew" she was out there in duplicate. She's been seeing her shadow for the last 90 minutes so it's not the revelation of revelations that she sees her shadow before the credits roll. And notice I am not attacking the mystical leanings in the film but rather their execution in the narrative.
It is a terrible shame that Kieslowski is no longer alive making films, of course. One of the less profound but still wonderful aspects of his art, especially in his last "French" phase, is his devotion to young, beautiful, complex female characters and the young beautiful, talented actresses who inhabit these roles. Maybe I am just a stupid, horny, old guy and I hope it is not simply sexist of me, but it seems to me that Kieslowski honestly does require these women to function as his Muse. Sure, TDLOV and the colour trilogy are erotic, sometimes very. But not in some crass way and this is not just because the eroticism is presented in a worthwhile context and the style coming off everything is so intense. That would be to validate the eroticism but placing it in something bigger than itself and while this validation is fine, at the same time I feel that there is already substance in the eroticism itself. This is what I mean by the Muse. These gorgeous gals and their emotional journeys are not pornographically objectified but rather standing in for the director's own subjectivity. He's speaking through them, or letting them speak for him, if you prefer. Hey, maybe there are radical feminists who would disagree. As far as I can see, though, these characters are empowered with agency, emotional fibre and true intelligence. One thing is for sure, Kieslowski is the George Cukor of European cincema insofar as he uses the camera to make women look more than merely beautiful. They are as sensuously tactile as two-dimensional images can be.
Related to this but far beyond it, the intense style of everything already mentioned. This is more than just cinematography but dialectially I maintain that it ultimately comes down to but one aspect of the cinematography, not the use of light in general but instead the selection of colour in particular. Kieslowski is explicit about this in the final trilogy but it is already happening in TDLOV, which I would call "Green." There is much yellow at work as well but this is elementary in relation to fabricating green. I don't want to exaggerate this interpretation. My intention is simply to point to the committment in the film to a colour, associated with a dramatic mood, associated with a psychological state, associated with an existential circumstance. Hummnn... maybe I DO mean to exaggerate this interpretation. I should indicate that this exaggeration is exactly the difference between how I felt last night and how I feel this morning about the film. Last night I grasped that the shimmering quality of the images in TDLOV was due to the use of color and this quality struck me as dangerously close to Malick; you know, what I take to be eye-candy visuals. Clearly, I recovered from this false impression. Be this as it may and turning away now from color in particular to the cinematography in general, TDLOV is possibly Kieslowski's most stunning picture. (Naturally, I would have to revisit the others you've shown me and visit all the others I've never seen.) Some of the framing, camera angles and lens distortions are absolutely arresting. And all of these tricks serve the atmosphere which in turn serves the story, especially the double-images produced through the train window, the marble, mirrors, window panes and so on. TDLOV is an extremely good-looking affair.
That's enough drooling. What about that story everything is serving? Well, I have to say it's pretty darn B-flat. It's your basic doppelganger premise given superficial investigation. As far as I can reckon, this premise is available for exploration along essentially three lines. One: a metaphysical line in keeping with folk-tales about twin ghosts and such. Two: an alter-ego line in keelping with psychoanalysis, which can be taken in the direction of either normal or abnormal psychology; i.e., everyday wackiness or mental illness. And three: an empirical line in keeping with fact-bound science, which can be taken in the direction of either a mystery-debunking detective plot or a technological-replication science fiction plot. TDLOV does not puruse any of these options with narrative rigour. It's a wishy-washy mess. I've already stated that for a minute I thought the style of the thing was like Malick a la Days of Heaven. Just for a minute. Now I have to announce that for a second I thought the concept of the thing was like Lynch a la (sigh) Mulholland Drive. Just for a second. The second has passed but I still maintain that TDLOV does amount to mostly smoke and mirrors.
That it is not just smoke and mirrors I know mainly by reading TDLOV as a chapter in Kieslowski's whole career. He moves away from governenment imposed documentation to realism permitting personal expression to an individual style with its own reference points of meaning. While this aesthetic development does not purely parallel movement away from statist ideology to democratic values to art for art sake, the fit is close enough. In the "French" films, the art for art's sake Kieslowski pursues has it's eye on private experience and only the most intimate social relations. After the political project has officially failed, the hardcore philosophic probing of the Decalogue occurs and this is, for me, the man's masterpiece. The last period is almost unabashedly romantic; hence, the erotic dimension I addressed earlier and the quasi-mystical tone I identify now.
As you know, I have a low tolerance for mysticism but I can get with the program in art if it is clear that it has been earned; not just picked off the self-help shelf but choosen desperately by those abandoned by religion. I list Kieslowski among the latter. Neither communism nor catholicism is working for him, so I appreciate his spiritual longing and I think it reverberates in his aesthetic. But this is no excuse for shoddy writing. Again, the narrative in TDLOV is weak and this is not to be critically salvaged in terms of groovy ambiguity, itself the excuse for vaguely implied mysticism. At the end of the day, the RELATION between Veronique and her double is unclear, and not in a devastatingly meaningful way as it is in Bergman's Persona. It's sorta jive.
And speaking of weaknesses in the script, a couple of scenes scream out for attention. She is in the home of her colleague and asks her if she remembers the plot of the puppet show the school saw that week or the name of the puppeteer. Her colleague professes ignorance only to reconsruct some knowledge like a crime-solver, eventually retrieving the book written by the puppeteer and on which the puppet show was based - from between a pillow and the cheek of her sleeping daughter. How lame! Here we see a retreat from magical connections to dull coincidence; a failure to commit to mystical enchantment which, ironically, comes off as less realistic, well, less believable at least.
The same problem happens to an even more severe degree near the end of the film, almost undermining the whole affair. She is a supposedly typical female, with a purse cluttered with stuff about which she keeps no account. She dumps out the contents for the puppeteer and he find a contact sheet of photographs she took while on a tourist trip to Poland and elsewhare. Of couse, we know all about this, dramatic irony ahoy, but she is completely startled when he points out to her that she has photographed herself. That she would not have studied the contact sheet as soon as she received it from the printer upon returning from her vacation, that she would not have noticed herself instantly in the picture she took - this is patently incredible. Why the lame writing? Because we are to understand that she is only now facing her double. No doubt, this is intended to give the film a climax but this grande finale violates everything that has preceeded it. She can't have some sudden epiphany of recognition because the heart of the mysticism - repeated at various points in the film - is that she always "knew" she was out there in duplicate. She's been seeing her shadow for the last 90 minutes so it's not the revelation of revelations that she sees her shadow before the credits roll. And notice I am not attacking the mystical leanings in the film but rather their execution in the narrative.
And Dan responds:
I've taken a moment to offer up my lavish praise of the film. Here goes:
Veronique is a ghost story, but not exactly your standard or conventional one. For instance, there's no romantic love story to speak of—though the film sure leads you to expect there to be one—and the only love is unspoken, in the form of an ineffable but undeniable connection felt between doppelgangers Weronika and Veronique. Kieslowski continues to plow the field of thought that contends that we are all connected in ways that we have little or no comprehension of. We are all tangled up in mysterious but tangible webs that link us emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, and only a fool would feign deny them, like the writer/puppeteer (the director's surrogate?) at the station (you'll notice strings dangle throughout the film in one of K's favourite conceits.)
I'll grant you that the film may have some narrative lapses, but I will also point out that the film is far less about the story than it is an emotional and philosophical examination of those invisible threads that bind us to one another, and the various glorious ways they exhibit themselves that such criticisms hold little sway with me. Anchored by a splendid and earthy performance from the ravishing Irene Jacob, who would later star in the concluding segment of Kieslowski's famed trilogy, Blue, White and Red, the film is a glory to look at, a sensual wonderland that encourages responses of wonder and awe at nearly every turn of the camera and each note in the soundtrack. I felt her character's pain when she mysteriuosly knew that someone close to her had died, but had no idea who, or why. This may seem like jived mysticism to you, but I think it touches on Kieslowski's belief in the mysterious interconnectedness of us all. Those who admit he possibility, like Veronique, may get a deeper pleasure out of life. Those who do not, like the puppeteer, may not. Veronique's final recognition of herself at the film's climax is simply the final, concrete proof of what she had been feeling all along.
Kieslowski allows us, like Veronique, to find, in the celebration of life's sensuous treasures, a kind of glorious transcendentalism. Through the concrete, we arrive at the abstract.
Veronique is a ghost story, but not exactly your standard or conventional one. For instance, there's no romantic love story to speak of—though the film sure leads you to expect there to be one—and the only love is unspoken, in the form of an ineffable but undeniable connection felt between doppelgangers Weronika and Veronique. Kieslowski continues to plow the field of thought that contends that we are all connected in ways that we have little or no comprehension of. We are all tangled up in mysterious but tangible webs that link us emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, and only a fool would feign deny them, like the writer/puppeteer (the director's surrogate?) at the station (you'll notice strings dangle throughout the film in one of K's favourite conceits.)
I'll grant you that the film may have some narrative lapses, but I will also point out that the film is far less about the story than it is an emotional and philosophical examination of those invisible threads that bind us to one another, and the various glorious ways they exhibit themselves that such criticisms hold little sway with me. Anchored by a splendid and earthy performance from the ravishing Irene Jacob, who would later star in the concluding segment of Kieslowski's famed trilogy, Blue, White and Red, the film is a glory to look at, a sensual wonderland that encourages responses of wonder and awe at nearly every turn of the camera and each note in the soundtrack. I felt her character's pain when she mysteriuosly knew that someone close to her had died, but had no idea who, or why. This may seem like jived mysticism to you, but I think it touches on Kieslowski's belief in the mysterious interconnectedness of us all. Those who admit he possibility, like Veronique, may get a deeper pleasure out of life. Those who do not, like the puppeteer, may not. Veronique's final recognition of herself at the film's climax is simply the final, concrete proof of what she had been feeling all along.
Kieslowski allows us, like Veronique, to find, in the celebration of life's sensuous treasures, a kind of glorious transcendentalism. Through the concrete, we arrive at the abstract.
Then Ben:
Let me make it plain from the outset that just because I cannot accept mysticism as a basis for human conduct in real life, that does not mean that I cannot accept it as a dramatic premise in art. This declared, a premise is not of itself a drama. It is only a point of departure and must be developed.
I feel compelled to shout my central criticism again. What is never adequately expressed - not analytically explicated, I'm not asking for that, heaven knows I'm not out to oppose the atmosphere of the film - what is never inescapably gestured is the RELATION between Veronique and Weronique. I consider it a serious weakness of your position that you have nothing to say about the central fact of the matter; namely, that the mystical premise of the film is that of the doppelganger. The double life of Veronique is double how? This is what I am asking. You can shovel snow all day about the mysterious interconnectedness of us all - hey, I watched the Kieslowski interview in the Special Features too - but this is no help with regard to the topic of the film: the mysterious interconnectedness of Veronique and Weronique specifically. You can tell me that I am being a dullard getting bogged down on narrative lapses when I should just revel in a kind of glorious trancendentalism and I would just have to suck this up - but you can't say this and also say that the film is a ghost story. OK, it's not a standard or conventional ghost story. So, fine, I can reformulate my criticism: Hey Kieslowski, tell me, what is a ghost anyway?
I suppose the crux of the debate turns on the status of ambiguity in the film. I have already said that for me it is a weakness and not a strength, a sign of - not merely a failure of narrative, this is too prosaic - it is a sign of muddled spiritualism on the part of the artist. Kieslowski is ultimately skeptical and even angst-ridden but still trying to put on a brave front, groping for optimism about the human spirit. He is attempting to fashion as much of a feel-good experience in art as he can, probably as much to encourage himself as the next guy. But he can't really commit. Now, such internally contradictory business is fine by me, hell, it's actually favored by me. But Kieslowski has suffered enough. He's leaving Poland and on his way to France and he's going to put some positive electricity into the air if it kills him. Well, the result is an exquisitly stylish and beautifully sensual film (I really like it!), but bogus spiritualism. (I apologize for the ad hominem treatment of the director here, I employ this tactic merely heuristically.)
The deeper diagnosis is grounded in dialectical thinking. The film's myticism is false positivity precisely because there is no negativity to which it is internally related; there is no threat, no danger, no struggle to overcome evil. I'm not saying I want something dogmatic wherein the saintly Mary-Kate drives a stake into the heart of the sinister Ashley. However, whatever the hell it is, the relation between Ver and Wer is a CONTRADICTION that Kieslowski entirely refuses to explore. It's as if even a riddle is too much binary thought so let's just float in a holistic fog. This too is fair game - but not in a film called "The DOUBLE Life of Veronique" in which we are shown twins of some sort who actually cross paths at one point in time and look at each other and photograph each other and so on.
I already said this film is no Persona. It is also no Rublev. Why is this? And I know you agree with me about both of these comparisons. Where is the suffering, the sorrow, the sacrifice? Without this anguish, spirtualism is silly to me, I mean, why bother if life is basically so benign and comfortable. For all its sexiness and moodiness and sensitivity, TDLOV is about a person - who just happens to be a very pretty girl - trying to catch a glimpse of herself in a mirror. The mysticism of the film resides in the indeterminate nature of the mirror.
And Dan:
All that mystical vagueness and lack of suffering didn't hurt the film much for me. Is this Bergman or Tarkovsky? Clearly not. But I'm willing to allow Kieslowski, now that the war is over and all, this moment of relative happiness, free from the dark grey doubts and fears that elevated many of his Polish films to a distinguished and tortured transcendence. Veronique's transcendance comes not out of conflict but from a sensuous search for interconnectedness that leads her down some dead ends, including her doppelganger's death. The sensuous wonder of Kieslowski's camera, which probes the world in search of meaning in the same way that Veronique wanders the streets of Paris, and this sensuality is mirrored in Jakob's scorching screen presence. Indeed, I dunno if Kieslowski, who has worked with some beautiful women, including Juliette Binoche and Julie Delpy, has ever filmed a woman more erotically than he does here. Just thinking about those images of Jakob is getting me worked up all over again. It's such a gorgeous film, so warm and sensuous (there's that word again) that I'm just soft-hearted enough to overlook any perceived weaknesses.
For more on Veronique, Bryant Frazer's review over at Deep-Focus rhapsodizes about the film in ways that I find affecting and touch on my deeply-held affection for the film.
