Spore van migrasie en verlies in Krzysztof Kieślowski se Three colours trilogy

Abstract

Traces of migration and loss in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three colours trilogy

This article will focus on Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three colours trilogy”, technically a French-Polish-Swiss co-production. Kieślowski lived in the West while filming the trilogy and therefore the theme of migration can be linked to the director as well as to the films. Kieślowski’s condition, however, is not a condition of exile but rather a state of being betwixt-and-between, a hybrid composed of past and present places (Poland and Western Europe). The transition from one space to another can also be identified as a threshold experience: it is an experience of loss of all that has gone before, of absence of both before and after, of anxiety generated by loss and uncertainty, and of desire, which arises from the lack which arose from these experiences. Kieślowski’s personal transition and liminal state bring forth the themes and style of the trilogy. The characters also find themselves in transition between two worlds; they live as émigrés of the imagination, conveying the feeling of being both part and not part of their personal world. Each character, in different ways, tries to cope with the loss: Julie in “Blue”, through a threshold fixation, Karol in “White”, through wrathful revenge, and Kern in “Red”, through the strategy of disavowal.