Detective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985)

The trio of films that followed Jean-Luc Godard's return to cinema mirrored, in some cases, his early work. Sauve qui peut (la vie), Passion and First Name: Carmen matched up in thematic and (vague) stylistic terms with Breathless, Contempt and Pierrot le fou. But it is Detective, Godard's lightest since Made in U.S.A., that truly recaptures the spirit of his New Wave material. Filled with cinematic and literary references, populated by existential refinements of various generic types (detectives, mob bosses, black-clad hoods playing billiards with a cigarette dangling from their mouths, disintegrating couples, paid-off boxers), Detective returns the director to his reflexive roots for a lovely throwback tempered only by the slight melancholy of the New Wave performers who now look older.

Confining the action to the Hotel Concorde Saint-Lazare, Detective moves between three groups of people whose paths overlaps as they move about the hotel. Godard films static takes that emphasize the boundaries of his setting, rarely able to move his camera far back enough inside a room to go further than a medium long shot. On the occasions that Godard does manage to put some distance between the camera and his actors, it comes in the form of dazzlingly placed high- and low-angle shots of hallways and the expansive ground floor, taking an uncharacteristic pleasure in the shining commercial retreat that lacks the director's typical, ironic assessment of the gold-plated chandeliers and plush carpet. Yet even these big, beautiful shots segment the hotel's layout into a series of locations unto themselves, suites and bars in a void that suggest proximity to each other only because all the characters keep running into each other.

Before Sunrise

The best romantic films are always the simplest, aren't they? Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, Chasing Amy, they all keep the conflicts within the bounds of realism, even with the exaggerations and hyperbole of comedy. There's very little funny about actual romance, of genuine "true love," so the best filmmakers do not attempt to inject it with some ill-fitting "wackiness." Richard Linklater's 1995 opus Before Sunrise adheres to this formula, and the result is one of the greatest depiction of love ever made by someone not named Woody Allen.

Plot-wise, Before Sunrise is about as simple as it gets: American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meets French Céline (Julie Delpy) meet on a train bound for Vienna, and spend the next 12 hours walking around the city, talking. Talking about what? You know, stuff. Personal information, world views, tastes, whatever the rambling conversation touches upon next. Along the way they meet a few people, but this is the story of these two people and these two alone.

But do not let this simplistic plot description fool you: Before Sunrise offers up some of the most gorgeous and real love I've ever witnessed in a film. Jesse and Céline do not speak in the witticisms and guarded soliloquies of Kevin Smith and Woody Allen, preferring instead to stumble through a conversation the way normal people do: sometimes they hit upon an idea they can wax almost poetic on for lengthy stretches of time, and sometimes a moment ends in an awkward lull of uncertainty. But those lulls only make the film bold, as you can't help but feel Linklater wrote them that way.

As Jesse and Céline walk through Vienna, we see one of the most beautiful cities in the world as they do: in tiny bursts. Linklater does not pan over the gorgeous landmarks or the city as a whole, he ambles into cafés and street shows. When we do get larger snapshots of the city's beauty, it blends with the characters' story so as to seem simultaneously mundane and profound. Linklater paints such a vivid portrait of the city that you'd swear he lived there. He basically takes an extraordinary city and makes it ordinary, which makes perfect sense when you consider the character. Neither of them are Italian, both are learned and arty but not pretentious, and neither of them stand out in the town. Jesse and Céline do not represent archetypes because they sum up too many people to fit into one classification.

Peripheral characters waft in and out of the isolated world of these two, mainly helping the new couple towards their next moment of insight. A fortune teller and two street performers seem as friendly, warm and inviting as the city itself. There's also a beggar who asks not for money but a single word, which he will then construct into a poem. Céline settles on the word "milkshake," as good a word as any. These minor figures, like Jesse and Céline, seem less like characters than abstracts, a part of the moment rather than something that stands outside it.

The film ends not with wild passion and the acknowledgement of true love, but with the more pragmatic realization that in the morning both will be back on a train heading towards their separate lives. Then the story takes one last turn, a simple vow that offers hope to their relationship even as we sense it will not be honored. But that does not make the film any less sweet, only more real. Then again, I must be at least somewhat wrong about my pessimism since Linklater finally made a sequel in 2004 (which just jumped to the top of my list of films to watch).

Before Sunrise is the kind of movie that would not only have not succeeded, but failed infamously had the pieces not been so meticulously crafted to look spontaneous. It takes a lot of gall to make moments intentionally boring, but Linklater structures everything so well that it only adds to the entertainment. But, of course, a great deal rides on the actors, and Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are so perfect for their roles that their conversations seem completely natural and improvised. Jesse and Céline ultimately strike me as the kind of characters who almost realize that they're in a movie, and both are smart enough to hate all the clichés. Therefore, they rebel against them, and we're lucky enough to be carried along while they do.

Three Colors Trilogy

Krzysztof Kieslowksi's Three Colors trilogy is one of the deepest, most rewarding film series I've ever seen. Very loosely related, they nevertheless form one giant film on the basis of their themes. Kieslowski's The Decalogue was based on each of the Ten Commandments, and this trilogy picks, of all things, the French flag as its nucleus, with each film titled after one of its three colors.

Blue starts things off magnificently with a hauntingly metaphysical dissection of grief. Juliette Binoche plays Julie, the wife of a famous composer, who must cope with the sudden deaths of her husband and their daughter in a car accident at the film's start. Her grief is overwhelming yet contained; she does not spend the first half of the film (or even a scene) in hysterics. Instead, she retreats into agony.

Julie does everything she can to rid herself of the pain. She burns her husband's unfinished symphony (a piece celebrating the unity of Europe), sells the house and moves to Paris, hoping the bustle of the city will envelop her. She takes nothing with her save an object of her daughter's made of blue beads, and distances herself completely from her past life. Yet soon she realizes that a rejection of the physical cannot dull her psychological trauma and, despite her attempts to cut herself off from the old Julie, Paris throws several items from her past back into her life.

On the one hand, she reunites with Olivier, her husband Patrice's best friend and a fellow composer. Julie knows Olivier loves her and rejects him at first, then turns to him to feel something. The other major character Julie must contend with is her husband's mistress, who is pregnant with his child. The scenes between the two do not play out as they likely would have in an American film; there are no screams nor catfights, only two women so broken that they recognize each other as kindred spirits in grief.

The tone of the film is certainly blue; these characters struggle through indescribable sorrow. Yet that is not what the title really means. On the French flag, blue stands for liberty, and ultimately Julie's tragedy becomes a means to start anew, free of the baggage of a husband whom she loved but nevertheless had to support. As she becomes more involved with Olivier we learn who really wrote Patrice's music, and the answer might not be who you think. The film ends with a completed version of his planned symphony, booming a message of hope into the story and signifying a new chapter in Julie's life, one in which she can move forward without forcing herself to forget the past.

White, a comparatively straightforward black comedy, seems about as distant in tone as you could get to the ponderous Blue. Karol, a Polish immigrant who speaks halting French, stands in a courtroom for divorce hearings, where (in a painful and painfully funny moment) his wife tells the poor sod she doesn't love him, and he must have it translated for him by a third party.

The divorce leaves Karol penniless and unable to return home to Poland, and eventually he plays songs in the metro station for change. Finally he meets Mikołaj, a fellow Pole who offers Karol a job: a man wants to die but cannot bring himself to commit suicide, so he'll pay Karol to do the deed.

From there the plot balloons; Mikołaj smuggles Karol back to Poland in a suitcase, where he attends to his task, with a number of twists. Eventually he regains his wealth by buying up valuable land on loans and selling them to companies for massive profits. This wealth allows him to pursue the theme of the film (and, of course, the meaning of this section of the flag): equality.

But just as liberty for Julie was not political, equality for Karol is not social. He means to "get even" with his wife Dominique, and plans to use his money to fake his death and implicate her. In these passages Kieslowski uses Karol for a metaphor for his native Poland. Poland has long been at the mercy of various European invaders, but with the fall of the Iron Curtain it at last regained its independence. Yet it was unceremoniously dumped back into the real world with nothing, and it quickly hosted the same sort of ruthless capitalism that hit postwar Japan. Karol personifies this journey: he's cast into the streets after a separation, then accumulates wealth to get his revenge.

The ending is hopeful, though perhaps not entirely earned, and that, combined with its more plot-driven narrative, makes it inferior to its predecessor, and the final chapter. Red, the best of the three (though distinguishing between them is a bit silly), takes the pathos of White's black comedy and meshes it with the spiritual musings of Blue, then adds in character insight that is wholly its own. The theme this time is fraternity, and Kieslowski crafts a film that shows the intertwining nature of man in a way that would make Robert Altman proud.

Red centers on Valentine (Iréne Jacob), a model who states in the beginning that she feels lonely. She has a brother, but he's distant yet possessive of his sister and Valentine finds no comfort in him. Every day she walks past Auguste, a law student studying to become a judge, who lives in her apartment building with his girlfriend Karin, the unofficial weatherperson of the neighborhood.

One night she accidentally runs over a dog and takes it to the address on her collar. She enters the house to find Kern, a retired judge who sits hunched over in his living room, isolated from the world. He says he doesn't care about the dog, so Valentine takes the poor thing to the vet herself. Eventually she and Kern strike up a friendship and, after a fashion, Valentine learns that his hobby is eavesdropping on people.

Kieslowski ever, ever so slowly connects the various threads of the story; establishing relationships between some characters and breaking apart others. It lacks the improvised feel of one of Altman's or Renoir's pieces, but it nevertheless seems to paint a portrait of life. Red bookends the trilogy with another tragedy, though this one offers more immediate hope. In the ending scenes, we see the major pairings of each film standing together, total strangers linked in ways beyond their knowing.

Apart from tackling the themes of the French flag, Kieslowski constantly employs each of the three colors in his shots. In Red, Valentine prepares for her shower by opening her blue blouse to reveal a white bra as she stands by a red shower curtain. In Blue, children in white bathing suits don red floaters and jump into a blue swimming pool. The director also links the films in minor ways: apart from the final moments of Red, Julie's story crosses into Karol and Dominique's when she stumbles into their divorce hearing looking for her husband's mistress. His camera movements, particularly in Red rarely call attention to themselves, and only do so when they're so incredible that I can't stop wondering how he did he could move the camera so fast without losing focus.

All in all, Kieslowski offers up one of the great trilogies in film, one linked not by narrative or franchised characters but by ideas. To steal from Ebert, these films are "metaphysical through example, not theory." Where a Hollywood version of this would have introduced a smarmy friend who'd make wisecracks until the last ten minutes before saying "Julie, life ain't about yo' past, it's about you," at which point I'd punch my own TV screen, Kieslowski lets the characters figure it out for themselves. It never spoon-feeds us the answers and for that we should be exceedingly grateful, although the fact that treating an audience like an adult is seemingly so rare it deserves gratitude is a bit of a sad realization. I have not seen anything else of Kieslowski's work, and I don't like to make bold platitudes, but the strength of these films alone ensure I will seek out his entire filmography, because I've never seen a director like him.