Three Colors: White

I suppose you could consider this a kind of supplement to my ongoing series of articles exploring the Sight an Sound Top 250, since both Blue and Red, the first and third films in director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors Trilogy are listed among those films, but the middle piece, White, is not.

So why not? Well, it’s an interesting question, and not one easily answered.

The first time I watched White, I definitely thought of it as the lesser of the three films. Of course, my initial approach to the films was not viewing them in order. I first saw Red while on a trip to visit an old friend in Chicago. It wasn’t until quite a while later that I tracked down the other two films. So White was actually the last of the three that I saw, and honestly I found it something of a let down.

A big part of that was thee fact that even though all three films are designed to stand by themselves, though they are tangentially interconnected, White seems much more of a singular outing.

Also, while the other two films have quite a bit of heft to them, especially the heavy-hearted Blue, White is, at least on its surface, much lighter, not quite a comedy, but with definite touches of humor.

The story opens with the divorce proceedings of Karol Karol and his estranged wife Dominique. Karol is a stranger in a strange land, Polish living in Paris, and having married a French wife. Struggling through the hearing with his limited understanding of French, he is embarrassed when Dominique tells the court that although she at least once loved him, she doesn’t anymore, mostly due to his inability to consummate their marriage.

After the divorce is granted, Dominique leaves Karol outside the courthouse with only a single oversized trunk which she tells him contains all of his belongings. To make matters even worse, Karol soon finds that his bank account has been frozen. He elects to take refuge for the night in a salon that he ran with his wife (he is trained as a hairdresser) but when she finds him there in the morning, Dominique first threatens to call the cops, then, after Karol once again fails her sexually, she sets fire to the drapes and tells him she will tell the police that he broke in and set fire to the place in an attempt at revenge for her leaving him.

Finally, completely destitute, Karol takes to busking in a subway station, spending his nights sleeping in an alcove and his days playing tunes on his comb hoping for change from the passing businessmen and tourists. It is here that he meets Mikolaj, a fellow Pole who recognizes the tune he is playing. The two men begin talking, and Mikolaj offers to take Karol back to Poland with him where he will have a chance for a new start.

The offer does not come without strings, however. Since Karol has no funds with which to pay for the trip. he has to repay Mikolaj back by performing a service for him. He tells Karol that he knows someone who wishes to die, and Karol will have to be the one to kill him.

Of course, even if Karol agrees to perform the murder, there is still the problem of getting him back to Poland. Not only does he have no funds, he is also without his passport. Finally, after a last desperate call to Dominique during which she teases him by making love to another man while he is on the phone, the two concoct a plan. Mikolaj will buy a ticket to Warsaw, and Karol will stowaway in his trunk which Mikolaj will reclaim at the end of the trip.

All does not go according to plan, though, as the trunk is stolen -along with a few other pieces of luggage – is stolen by an unscrupulous baggage handler. The thief and his friends take the bags to the wilderness in order to open them and make money off whatever they may contain. Imagine their surprise upon learning that the large trunk they have stolen actually contains a person!

Beaten by the thugs an left alone in the wilderness, Karol eventually makes his way back to his home town where he is joyously reunited with his brother and begins to set up shop in his brother’s salon. He is, however, still discontent, realizing that he will never really get ahead the way he wants to earning only the money he makes as a hairdresser. So, he goes to a local money exchange office (which is obviously a front for some rather shady deals) and gets a job as a lookout and bodyguard. It’s in this role that he soon learns that his bosses intend to quietly buy up a large amount of property that they know is soon to be highly desirable to some rich developers.

Karol then sets about undercutting them by buying up small parcels of land which they will need in order to have a complete tract to sell to the developers. Having his (now former) employers over a barrel, Karol agrees to sell the property to them for ten times what he paid.

Also during this time, Karol has reconnected with Mikolaj who tells him that the offer he made to him in France still stands: If he will kill a man who desires to die, he will be paid an enormous sum of money. It really comes as no surprise that the man is Mikolaj himself. He has lost his passion for life, but is unwilling to kill himself because of the desolation it would cause to his family.

Meeting on an abandoned subway platform, Karol pulls out a gun, explaining off-handedly that these days pretty much anything can be bought. He repeatedly asks Mikolaj if he is sure he wants to go through with it until his friend forcibly brings Karol’s gun-holding hand to his chest, and Karol pulls the trigger.

Mikolaj collapses, then realizes that he is still alive. Karol tells him that the first bullet was a blank, but the next one is real, an again asks the older man if he truly wants to go through with his death. It seems, though, that this brush with his own demise was enough to change his mind and he now wants to live. Still he goes ahead and pays Karol the money he promised him, telling him that he has earned it.

So, with the money he gets from Mikoaj, and that he has scammed from his former boss, Karol sets up his own company, bringing Mikolaj on as a partner, and the company quickly takes off, making Karol quickly wealthy. However, no matter how much his lifestyle grows and how wonderful his life seems, there is still one thing he doesn’t have: Dominique. An she is something that he still desperately wants.

And as we all know, when a man is desperate for something, he often resorts to desperate measures.

The film is truly a masterpiece, and is filled with incredible performances. Julie Delpy is stunning as Dominique an its easy to see why a man like Karol (or any man, for that matter) would be obsessed with her. At the same time she is truly convincing in her portrayal of a woman whose disappointment with her situation and her partner turns to anger and evil.

Zbigniew Zamachowski plays Karol Karol, and he has just the right face to portray this desperate man who is seemingly put upon by the entire world. At the same time he manages almost always to maintain a hopefulness in the future that at times seems almost out of place considering his circumstances.

Also of note in the film is Jerzy Stuhr who plays Karol’s brother Jurek. Sturh is an actor who worked quite a bit with Kieślowski and it’s easy to see why the director would want to use him as often as possible.

So, while White may not be as dark or as fraught as the other two movies in the Three Colors trilogy, it is in no way a lesser movie. In many ways, as a matter of fact, it is much more accessible than Blue, which asks much more of its audience.

Highly recommended.