Part of the Picture: Let There Be Enlightenment

LET THERE BE ENLIGHTENMENT

JULY 26, 2008 – THE CHAIN OF EVENTS THAT UNSPOOLS after Valentine (Irène Jacob) hears a sickening thud while driving and discovers she’s hit a dog whose collar is inscribed with the name Rita – in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Red – makes you wonder if this was just a random incident or an inevitability engineered by the mysterious old man known as Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant). Rita is his dog, and when Valentine enters his house to accept reimbursement for her expenses at the vet’s – where Rita was treated and pronounced healthy, and also pregnant – she discovers, to her horror, that he’s been eavesdropping on his neighbours’ phone conversations.

Valentine listens to one such conversation being recorded, that of a man who’s cheating on his wife. Filled with indignation at something so private being made so public, she rushes to this neighbour’s house to inform him that he’s being spied on. But once she’s there, something stops her. She returns to the old man’s house and demands, “What were you? A cop?” “Worse,” he says. “A judge.” Valentine sinks into a chair, trying to process this information by tossing his reply back as a superfluous question. “A judge?” He’s amused. “You’ve never seen one for real?” He pulls on his suspenders and releases them, offering their snap against his body as proof of his corporeal actuality.

“Would you like to try?” he asks, leaning forward, the suspender extended. “It makes a lovely sound.” Valentine is silent. He continues. “I don’t know whether I was on the good or the bad side. Here at least, I know where the truth is.” He points to the outside. “My point of view is better than in a courtroom.” She disagrees, arguing that everyone deserves a private life. “Of course,” he nods, humouring her innocent convictions, and asks, “Why did you stop short? Why didn’t you tell him?” Valentine tries to sort out, for herself, the reason she couldn’t bring herself to tell the adulterer across the street that he was being spied on.

The judge is relentless. “Because he has a sweet wife devoted to him? And a little daughter who loves him? So you couldn’t? Did you feel remorse or were you afraid to do harm?” He leans forward in a conspiratorial whisper. “Let me tell you… It matters little whether I spy or you tell them. Sooner or later, he’ll jump out a window or she’ll find out everything. Someone will tell their daughter and it will be living hell.” Valentine looks away, realising he’s probably right, and probably hating him for being right. He finishes with a flourish. “What can we do about it?”

Then he commands, “Stay a minute.” When Valentine asks why, he prophesies, “The light is beautiful.” And indeed, the dark spaces of the study behind him begin to fill up with light, as if doing his bidding. He then directs Valentine’s attention to what he jokingly terms, “Next program.” This time, it’s a mother trying to guilt her daughter into visiting her. She whines, “It kept hurting. It still does. I haven’t done the errands. I have no milk or bread.” The daughter says she’d bought milk and bread and put it in the freezer. “I ate it all,” the mother persists. The daughter yells, “You didn’t eat seven loaves in four days. I’m sick of this.” The judge looks at Valentine, who’s sunk to the floor, overwhelmed. “Go do her errands. Maybe you’ll feel better.”

There’s the tiniest fleck of contempt in his voice, a gentle mocking of human weaknesses like sentiment and compassion by someone so above it all, he can apparently bend nature to his will and flood his space with brightness (in other words: “let there be light”). And with this godlike omniscience, he asks, “Why did you pick up Rita?” Valentine states the obvious. “Because I’d run over her. Because she was bleeding.” The judge nods, indicating these are valid reasons. Then he enlightens her with why she really did what she did. “Otherwise you’d have felt guilty. You’d have dreamt of a dog with a crushed skull.”

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Posted in: Cinema: Foreign