Blue is silence. It is a melody that penetrates us, a silent cry, a secret that we touch but cannot decipher. In Kieslowski’s camera, this color is a veil of mourning and in Kundera’s words, it is man’s existential conflict: the unbearable peace of heaviness and the crushing emptiness of lightness. Where the two meet, we encounter the human soul at its most naked.
A woman crushed by the weight of losses, breathless by the lightness of existence. Kieslowski’s Julie and Kundera’s Tomas, Sabina, Tereza, all are souls echoing in different corners of the same universe. Kieslowski’s "Blue" is like an elegy that delves into the depths of the human soul under the guidance of a camera. Milan Kundera’s "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is a paradox of existence that touches minds with words. In the union of these two magnificent masterpieces; that incredible poetic harmony between the lightness and heaviness within a person captures us.
Milan Kundera places life on two opposing axes: heaviness and lightness. Heaviness; is meaning, attachment and carrying the burden of the past, love and losses. Lightness is an escape from ties; it is giving up meaning in the name of freedom. Julie’s story is right in the middle of this conflict.
Julie abandons everything to escape the weight of her losses. In her own words, “Not wanting anything, not having anything” is her definition of freedom. However, there is a truth that Kundera whispers to us; “Lightness is not salvation, it creates a kind of existential void.” Julie faces the unbearability of lightness. As she wants to break away from life, life does not leave her alone. Her husband’s unfinished composition returns like a ghost. This composition represents everything Julie wants to escape from: love, loss, meaning and the profound and shocking weight of being human.
Kundera describes Tereza’s hatred for lightness as “a nausea from lightness.” Julie’s struggle with this lightness is no different. Breaking free from ties does not bring her freedom, but loneliness and emptiness. Kieslowski echoes Kundera’s existential question here: Is lightness a liberation or a door to human destruction?
In Kundera’s world, love is like a bridge between heaviness and lightness. For Tomas, love is lightness; it is the touching of one body to another and leaving no trace behind. For Tereza, love is a sacred bond that pins one to the ground. Kieslowski’s Blue explores this conflict of love through mourning.
Julie’s love for her husband and daughter is a weight that shapes her life. With her loss, this love becomes a wound. Julie wants to destroy this love; but Kieslowski and Kundera meet at the same point here: Love is an indestructible force. The music composed by Julie’s husband is an echo of this love. This music is, as Kundera says, “a remembrance that goes beyond lightness.” Love fights lightness; it does not disappear, it only transforms.
Imagine a scene: Julie in front of Kieslowski’s camera; Kundera’s Sabina in a studio full of lights. Julie, in a world painted in blue tones, is blown away from the heaviness of life toward lightness. Sabina abstracts everything with the brush strokes she makes on her canvas; she tries to get rid of the burden of something. But both of them know: Lightness is just a deception, both spiritually and worldly.
The blue in Julie’s life is the lightness that Sabina portrays with the symbol of a hat. For Sabina, lightness is a rebellion, a call for freedom. For Julie, it is a vortex of deep melancholy. While Kieslowski glorifies sadness with blue, Kundera questions lightness. Both of them come to the same conclusion: Life is a pendulum that oscillates between lightness and heaviness.
Zbigniew Preisner’s compositions are like a bridge in Kieslowski’s blue world. Intersecting with Kundera’s words “life is a melody,” these pieces represent the conflict that resonates in Julie’s soul. The composition is Julie’s forced connection with her past; an attempt to create meaning. While Kundera’s Sabina lightens meaning with art, Julie learns to embrace heaviness through this composition.
A blue silence falls when the composition is complete. In Kundera’s world, this moment is a sacred triumph of heaviness. In Kieslowski’s world, it is the moment when life settles into a fragile balance.
Kieslowski’s "Blue" and Kundera’s "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" describe the existential paradox of man. Man’s search for freedom is also a search for meaning. As Kundera says, “Nothing that is experienced once is meaningful.” Kieslowski takes this idea and tells Julie’s story: breaking ties is not liberation; creating meaning is the essence of being human.
Julie’s blue is symbolic of the transition from Kundera’s lightness to his heaviness. Is life a burden or a freedom? Kieslowski’s Julie, like Kundera’s Sabina and Tereza, is lost in this question. And perhaps the answer is this: Life is neither all blue, nor all light, nor all heavy. Life is all of it.
