the dimwit
by
Douglas Messerli
Krzysztof
Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz (writers), Krzysztof Kieślowski (director) Trois couleurs : Blanc (Three Colors :
White) / 1994
There, however, he is met by another
Polish exile, Mikołaj (Janusz Gajjos), who offers him a strange job: to kill
someone who wants to be dead but doesn’t have the courage to do it himself. But
in order to fulfill the offer, Karol must return to his homeland. With no
passport or money, Karol hides in a large trunk which Mikołaj carries on as
part of his luggage.
The irony of Karol’s first statements upon
finding himself in the bleak white landscape, says a great deal about the dark
humor of this film: “Home at last."
The miserable fool finally finds his
way back to the hairdressing salon where he once worked, now run by his brother
Jurek (Jerzy Stuhr); when he notices that the salon now has a neon sign, Jurek
responds “This in now Europe,” setting the tone for the changes in Polish life
that the rest of White chronicles.
Karol goes back to work cutting hair,
but also finds a job as security guard to a group of men who plan to buy up
land outside the city and sell the parcels back to others who, they have heard,
are planning a large Ikea-like warehouse in the area. They openly discuss their
deal in front of what appears to be the sleeping guard, whom they describe as a
“dimwit.”
If Karol is a kind of dimwit, he soon
proves that is also very clever, as he secretly buys up some of the sites
himself, forcing them to buy them from him. When they attempt to threaten him,
he claims that if he dies, he has willed it all to the Church.
Karol also again encounters Mikołaj,
who again offers money for the murder of a depressed man, revealing that he,
himself, is that man. Buying a gun, Karol shoots his friend—but it is a blank,
giving his friend a second choice. Suddenly Mikołaj has changed his mind, and
wants to continue living. Indeed, he goes to work for Karol, who has now opened
up a seemingly shady import-export business.
Hatching a deeper plot, Karol finds the
body of a Russian, which he claims to be himself, sending a letter to his
former wife in which he wills her a large sum of money if she will return to
Poland for the funeral.
Angrily, she does so, the two meeting
and, finally, consummating their former marriage. But soon after, she is
arrested for the supposed murder of her husband, and is imprisoned.
The film closes with Karol visiting her
in jail, as she, like he in Paris, unable to speak the language, attempts to
communicate with him through hand signs. Karol simply closes his eyes as if to
suggest a closure to the affair and that it is time to move on.
This film, with its “idiot savant,” has a
long tradition in Eastern European and, in particular, Polish literary history.
And the director’s dark view of the human race is perfectly at home in what
Roger Ebert has described as an “anti-comedy.” Yet, strangely, the movie makes
few judgments, preferring instead for the viewers to make their own perceptions
about the character’s behavior. Besides, we will see the couple briefly, again,
in Red, just as we saw them for a few
instants in Blue, and, in that sense,
perhaps they are more linked to the characters to those films than it would
first seem.
Los Angeles,
November 30, 2016
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