Triple Features at the Clark

Did you ever sit in the auditorium at the Clark? It’s comfy -- lots of elbow and leg room to stretch out. And a good thing too, since this winter I am inviting audiences to settle in for three long Sunday afternoons of filmwatching, three interconnected programs each day, in a series called “Triple Feature: 3 Colors, 3 Painters, 3 Studios.” So on the final Sunday of the next three months -- if you’ve got the seat for it, have we got a seat for you!

These marathon viewings for the iron-bottomed brigade are intended to add up to more than the sum of the parts, unique opportunities to survey a subject at one sitting. Alternatively, of course, you can pick and choose from the constituent programs, all of which are free admission, as is the museum itself in the off-season. So make a day of it -- visit the galleries, browse the museum shop, walk up Stone Hill, refresh yourself at the cafe, and then settle back in your easy chair for more highly visual viewing.

The first program in the series, on January 29, comprises Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs trilogy: Bleu, Blanc, and Rouge. Blue will screen at 11:00 am, White at 1:30 pm, and Red at 4:00 pm.

Put together over the course of an amazingly productive year in 1993, these three films based on the tricolor of the French Revolution and the corresponding themes of liberty, equality, and fraternity -- addressed from a spiritual and not a political perspective -- were Kieslowski’s swansong to cinema. He withdrew from filmmaking after Red was released to international acclaim, and died in heart surgery little more than a year later, at the age of 54.

Kieslowski emerged from a documentary movement in Poland, eventually moving from tv to film. He broke into international recognition in the late Eighties with The Decalogue, a series for Polish tv, each hour segment jumping off from one of the Ten Commandments. Thereafter, he worked primarily in French, becoming a darling of the art house circuit with The Double Life of Veronique in 1991. Three Colors came next, the culmination of his meteoric career.

The three separate films have different casts of characters, but were put together by a single creative team, from scriptwriter and composer through the crew, except that each has a different cinematographer to highlight the respective colors in a distinctive visual scheme. And each has a luminous French actress to illuminate the emotional tone.

Blue belongs to Juliette Binoche. Losing her husband and daughter, she wants to cut herself free from all human relations, but the music she shared with her composer husband will not let her go, and draws her back to life and connection. Rarely has grief been explored with such tact and sensitivity.

Julie Delpy sets the black comedy of White in motion by humiliating her Polish husband in Paris divorce proceedings. He has to return to Warsaw to get his balls back, and regains equal status with her by making a killing in the new capitalist free-for-all. After being equally hurtful to each other, they love anew.

Irene Jacob was Veronique, and in Red she is Valentine, a sensitive heart-throb of a student and model in Geneva. She hits a dog with her car, and discovers the owner is a misanthropic retired judge played by Jean-Louis Trintignant. Opposites will attract, and the two form an unusual bond of fraternity.

But believe me, few films are less dependent on plot to weave their spell. The Three Colors are a symphonic cascade of sound and shade, incident and reflection, faces and feelings, gestures and acts. Immerse yourself and discover a new way of cinematic knowing.

Enigmatic but never obfuscating, these films demand an unusual quality of attention from viewers, to make all the connections and yet come face to face with the unsolvable puzzle at the center of the story, the mystery of motivation and the accident of destiny in each life.

Nobody could describe his purpose better than Kieslowki himself: “Film is often just business -- I understand that and it’s not something I concern myself with. But if film aspires to be part of culture, it should do the things great literature, music, and art do: elevate the spirit, help us understand ourselves and the world around us, and give people the feeling they are not alone.”

Beyond the nominal tricolor signification of liberty, equality, fraternity, this trilogy meditates on contingency, coincidence, synchronicity. The human situation in a world of chance and choice. In words of one syllable, these films are about life and death, love and fate. Let us ponder together.

This series continues with “Triple Feature: 3 Painters” on February 26: Artemisia at 11:00, Carrington at 1:30, Pollock at 4:00. And concludes with “Triple Feature: 3 Studios” on March 26, which will be a marathon exploration of animation way beyond Disney or Pixar, surveying the work of The National Film Board of Canada, Aardman Animation (of Wallace & Gromit fame), and the Hubley Studios -- Academy Award-winners all.