Three Colours: Red (1994)

Saw Three Colours: Red, the last in the trilogy.  This film is concerned with brotherhood.  It's much more visceral and dramatic than the other two films and, I felt, had a much more interesting soundtrack.  It follows Valentine, a model and student, versus a retired judge (who never gets a name despite getting second billing in the cast.)  Optimistic Valentine believes that people are basically decent and good whereas the judge has seen enough misery to conclude that people are basically selfish and cruel.

The film plays out slowly, involving various other folks in its plot, the camera mildly roving the streets, following a person here, drifting into a window there.  The theme of brotherhood seems obscure to me, except in the broadest sense of us all being brothers (in a way.)

The most compelling part of the film is the slow philosophical argument played out between the two main characters.  Luckily for me, they settle their differences with grand dramatic gestures: sending one an invite to a fashion show, or adopting a dog.  Such drama!  Such pathos!

We never really get into why the judge is this way.  He references some old love affair, but the judges cynical malaise is endemic on the internet, where to be outraged is to be aware, where to be disillusioned is to be wise.  My understanding is that such misery is often idealism that is curdled and gone sour: a belief that since one's life is not like a rom-com then either you have been lied to or cheated.  The solution presented in the film of unwavering decency and quiet outrage in the face of leering cruelty does not scale.  It supposes that there is more optimism in the world than cynicism and I'm not sure this is the case.  It would have been better, perhaps, to have the model out-clever the judge by pointing out that people are both good and bad and that if you watch only the bad, then that's all you'll see.  But maybe this is just cheap sophistry.  It's a difficult problem.

Anyway the film is pretty good, very dramatic and with a few really dazzling scenes (when the law student is on the balcony, wow!) the score was banging and it was a nice, wholesome, uplifting film.  A good note to end on!