Wings of Cinema: The Double Life of Veronique Review

Bravo!

I just recently watched this piece and I could not have said it better myself. You capture everything about this movie that makes it what it is; I'm almost as mesmerized by this review as by the movie itself.

Yeah quite good. It wasn't as "fun" for me as Fanny and Alexander, but I can definitely agree with a comparison. I'd say Bergman's maxim (given when contrasting F+A to everything before it) is a lot more palpable and didactic than Kieslowski in Veronique which is why I prefer it. Or more accurately it is why I watch F+A more often than Veronique. The quote you had from Kieslowski hits why - this film starts losing value when I reason with it, where as F+A gives me ready packed things to go out and project onto the world.

That glass ball is the whole film. Kieslowski is clever not to make talking about Veronique impenetrable, and I think the glass ball is like a language device he has built in order for the film to be meaningfully represented outside the film. It's made impossible, with a review or essay or little comment on IMDB to say "this is what this film is about" - instead we're given an image that captures its style and themes, but moreso, an image that captures its metaphysical whispering within feelings rather than reason. To go further it's even a metacritical statement, speaking beyond what the ball represents in the film to what the ball represents within the film's criticism. That being a key to properly explaining its inexplicability.

The last comment you made - of the film praising life's individual humanity- was interesting. It made me think of what I think Kieslowski would have said when pitching it to someone, as a film about someone literally discovering life. This character always had an intuition that informed her decisions, when it was taken away (Polish veronique dies) she's sent into a spin, and when she discovers that she is now "free" of her metaphysical double and for the first time creating her life on her own. It's like Aristotle who attributes life to things that control the power to move, rather than simply having the power to move. Veronique was born again (but thankfully not as an evangelical Christian)

Excellent review Islandeye.

What do you think of the following theories on the film:

http://www.yusufmanjoo.com/?p=481