European Cinema

R.    Reimer

Class Minutes for April 4, 2001

Professor Reimer began class with instructions for writing the medium paper and the oral presentation that would be given based on the paper.  We are allowed to turn our papers in on the 11^th of April.  This will allow professor Reimer to read over them and make suggestions on improving the papers before the final due date.  The papers are due the last day of class, May 2.

The next topic discussed by Professor Reimer was our oral presentations. Oral presentations are based on the papers we write. The purpose of the presentation  is to inform our classmates about our chosen topic, and relate the ideas we discovered while writing our paper.  The presentation should be approximately five minutes in length, but no longer than seven minutes if  a clip is shown.  Points will be deducted if the presentation goes over the allotted time limit. It is not mandatory to show a movie clip. However, if a clip is used to illustrate our point,  the clip should meet the following criteria:

1.     It is not too long to fit the allotted time.

2.     It is relevant to our chosen topic.

3.     We express how the clip relates to our topic.

Professor Reimer  warns to have the correct information and to double check our sources so we do not report on the wrong director or date of the film.  However, he will allow for the date of the film to be off by three years at the most.

After Professor Reimer finished answering our questions, we moved to a  discussion of the film, Blue.  First, we broke up into groups of four to discuss the hand-out questions we answered for homework. Our group discussions lasted approximately fifteen minutes before we discussed them as a class. 

Before the class discussion began, we received  background information on  the director, Kieslowski.  Kieslowski is Polish and spent the first half of his career in Poland.  He filmed, No End in Poland.  Like other Polish directors of the time, he moved to France The first film he directed in France was The Double Life of Veronica.  Then he made a trilogy, Blue, White, and Red. These are references to the French flag.  These colors are symbolic.  Blue symbolizes Liberty, White equality, and Red is for Friendship.  With that short review, we moved on to the questions. 

Question One -  At times, Kieslowski seems to use coincidence as a structuring device for the narrative in Blue.

Coincidence structured this film. One thing led to another.  Julie hears a man getting mugged, she goes to look and gets locked out of her apartment.  She meets a neighbor who is a prostitute.  They become friends and she eventuall helps Julie.  One event leads to the next in this film, as in most films.  But Kieslowski’s film is more than “plot driven.  He is trying to show the interconnectedness of events.  Kieslowski is experimenting with this film.  In this way, it resembles,  Run Lola Run.  Both films were coincidence oriented. Professor Reimer then shows us a clip of Blind Chance.  It is a Kieslowski film that resembles Run Lola Run. In the first scene, we see a man screaming.  It cuts to a young man running to catch his train.  In the first episode, he makes the train and becomes a part of the communist party.  The entire time, he is trying to get to France.  Then the film starts over.  This time he is running to catch a train and is stopped by the conductor.  He is put in jail for hitting the conductor.  He later becomes part of the underground, fighting the communist party.  During both of the above scenarios, the man is attempting to get to France.  In the third episode, we once again see him running to catch the train; and, this time, he misses it. However the conductor is not there, instead he runs into an old girl friend.  They become close again and get married.  In the end, he finally gets his visa to France.  He boards the airplane and the film then cuts to the plane taking off and eventually exploding in the air.

After the film clip, we moved on to the second question. -  At other times scenes seem to have no connection to anything else in the film. How many can you identify?

Scenes mentioned are: the old lady putting the bottle in the recycling bin, Julie swimming, the baby mice, and the guy Tony, who saw the accident.  After we mentioned the different scenes, we tried to explain the scenes and why they were in the movie.  First, was the old lady and Julie’s mother.  Both women were alone in their own ways.  Since the old lady was too old to do anything else, she was recycling.  This was her way of trying to keep an active part in the community.  Julie’s mother was alone because she has Alzheimer’s.  She is alone, withdrawn and isolated due to her condition.  Then there was Julie swinning.  Julie uses swimming to forget her problems.  The water gives Julie a means to temporarily forget and block things out of her mind.  For instance when she goes into the dead man float, she blocks out the world.  Then there were the Mice or Mice Babies as Julie called them.  She couldn’t kill them herself so she uses a cat.  Julie lost her own child and could not face what she did.  So she had to get someone else to clean up the cats after math. 

We covered the third  question  - Analyze the effect on the viewer of  Kieslowski’s use of blacking out the scene only to return to the same point when the visuals return.   The normal use of blacking a scene is the transition to a new scene.  Kieslowski uses this as a breaking point or a moment of thought.  When the scene goes blank, time passes even though we do not think it does.  However, it does.  This is shown with the playing of music. 

We then moved to what is considered the most difficult question, question number Four.  The film quotes Corinthians I, 13.  What is the reason for this reference?   Corinthians I, 13 is a verse on love and the importance of caring.  Kieslowski is saying that we can’t be alone, we have to care for others. We have to Love.  Then Professor Reimer showed us another film clip.  This clip was of Blue but a different version.  The clip was towards the end, and this time it showed the Corinthian connection more clearly as the words to the chorus were translated.

After viewing the clip, the class ended.  We did not get to the last two question. Professor Reimer is hoping we can cover them at our next class meeting..  He said a few closing remarks and bid the class Good Day.