Imagination built fantasies on developing the science of colour. From Aristotle’s mixing of elemental hues to Newton’s prismatic splitting of a sunbeam into a spectrum of seven primary colours which in turn correlates with seven planets and the heptatonic musical scale. Goethe emphasised human perception and subjective experience of colour and influenced artists and thinkers with his focus on colour psychology and aesthetics. The retina of the eye has millions of light-sensitive cells with different colour sensitivities. Colours convey feelings, relationships and contrasts, dramas and tensions, the nature of matter, its processes and transmutations.
The Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski used colours in his film trilogy not only as a visual element but as a key to the soul of the film. The trilogy is made up of three films: Blue, White and Red. There is another layer to Kieslowski’s film symbolism. It is the French national flag. Aside from the enigmatic colour symbolism, Kieslowski explores the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, an embodiment of French revolutionary ideals, through the lens of personal loss and the characters' resilience.
The first movie was “Blue”. Let’s look at the meanings that are ascribed to the colour blue. It is the rarest colour in nature although the sea and sky are quite vast. Blue is linked with eternity, the beyond, the spiritual and mental as contrasted with the emotional and physical as detached from the earthly. In everyday language, it points to the special, highest; for example: blue-chip stocks are those of the most value, blue ribbon for the first prize, blue-ribbon as in elite committee. In evolution, the human eye was able to perceive the warm colours first before the cool ones. For example, Homer had no word for blue and referred to the sea colour as dark. Blue does feel cold. Blue is the colour of the moonlight. Blue light slows the heart rate, lowers blood pressure and affects the growth of plants. It is the colour of bruises, melancholy, isolation, “the blues”. The atmosphere of the movie “Blue” could not be closer to this description. It is cold, drenched in melancholy and moves slowly. The main character Julie (Juliette Binoche) is devastated after the death of her husband and daughter in a car accident. She withdraws from the world and moves ceaselessly through her grief and hopelessness.
White evokes pristine, monotone landscapes. The polar whiteout erases even shadows, eliminates the horizons and deceives our perception of depth and scale. White also plays between the opposites. It is a merging of fire and ice, heat and frigid cold. The Snow Queen of the North is captivatingly beautiful and wintry, the pallid vampire bloodless in its passion. White receives the projection of all or nothing. The psychologist Rudolf Arnheim observed that white is a symbol of integration without presenting to the eye the variety of vital forces that it integrates and thus is as complete as a circle. For Melville’s Captain Ahab, however, the greatest White Whale Moby-Dick conveys the indefiniteness and impersonal vastness of the universe and human fears of annihilation. Where fantasy identifies white reductively with light, white can be forced into polarising opposition with black. Here, white becomes purity, virtue and innocence versus black as turbid and evil. The temptation for this kind of simplistic contrast was given in the movie “White”. It follows the story of Valentine (Julie Delpy), a young woman who is forced to marry a man she does not love in order to save her father from financial ruin. Eventually, she finds her freedom through her love for a young man named Dominique (Benoît Magimel). But as always, freedom has a complex meaning, as we learn in the final scenes of the movie.
If red is the music to eyes then red would be the sound of trumpets. Red is evoked in humans by radiating energy of specific wavelengths which increase muscle tone, blood pressure and breath rate. These effects occur also in blind humans and animals, so red is not purely an experience of the eye but something more like a bath. Symbolically, red is the colour of life. Its meaning relates to the human experience of blood and fire. In primitive thinking, blood was life. If blood left the body it took life with it. At the same time, the red flow of blood was a danger signal. The red fire was our comfort and protection, but, out of control, a threat of annihilation. Red attracts us conveying vitality, warmth and comfort but also warns of danger, calls for attention, and says ‘stop’. Red tells the story of a judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who becomes embroiled in a love triangle with a woman (Irène Jacob) and a man (Daniel Olbrychski). He is forced to confront his own prejudices and tries to find acceptance from people from other social classes. The characters in this movie forge bonds even though they have little in common. The plot tells stories of people who are connected in the most random and surprising ways.
The Three Colours trilogy is a powerful exploration of the human psyche. The films are beautifully shot and depict complex characters struggling to find their place in the world. It is also a mediation on the nature of love, loss and redemption.