Kieslowski is pure magic...pure cinematic pleasure!
His movies are both intellectual and humanistical.
The three colours trilogy("Blue","white","red" ); The Decalogue(the ten part epic masterpiece).

The Decalogue alone gives him a NO CRAP vote!

Fucking brilliant. Dekalog is amazing. So incredible that these were made-for-tv movies!

totally awful wayward christian fundamentalist

UTTER CRAP (with a nice eye)

GuyMercier wrote:totally awful wayward christian fundamentalist

UTTER CRAP (with a nice eye)

Funny. I thought he was atheist. This is a vague impression having read Kieslowski on Kieslowski ten years ago. Which was why I thought his taking on subjects closely associated with religion and metaphysics was compelling.

A quick google search only gives this:

Kieslowski regarded himself as an atheist, and his long-time writing partner, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, identified himself as a Christian but not a Catholic. Their intention with the series was to ponder what role the commandments might have in contemporary dilemmas without using interpretations that were necessarily Christian -- it's more a matter of religiosity than religion.

Atheist or no, NOT CRAP.

I disagree with him, but David Thomson's take on him in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film has some validity:

"There is no doubting his feeling for things seen and heard; there is no question but that he is a filmmaker, and one following in the steps of Bresson. But, for me, Kieslowski frequently runs the risk of being precious, mannered, and so cold as to forbid touchig."

I like Kieslowski's chilliness. From reading him describe himself, his aesthetic and beliefs, he was a bleak guy, but funny. This coldness was just his way of dealing with this bleakness he felt about the world.

sparky wrote:I like Kieslowski's chilliness. From reading him describe himself, his aesthetic and beliefs, he was a bleak guy, but funny. This coldness was just his way of dealing with this bleakness he felt about the world.

Very nicely put.

K on K is a great read even if you don't like his films. Just the bit about him getting out of going into the army is worth it.

The Double Life of Veronique does not get the recognition it deserves. I think it is by far his most perfectly realised work and is one of the most beautiful films (and not just in a visual sense) I have ever seen.

I don't find his outlook bleak. On the contrary, I feel his films represent a certain strain of tender humanism, which I think he perhaps shares with Nabokov, and that he is misunderstood for the same reasons people misunderstand Nabokov (but maybe that is because I am a cold-hearted motherfucker).

RANK:

Blue
White
Red

Double Life Of Veronique is finally coming out, on Criterion no less. i look forward to seeing it.

when i was at the Berlinale ealier this year i saw a presentation on Kieslowski which featured a panel including Wim Wenders. the guy who did the commentary on the Diary of a Country Priest DVD was the moderator. he specifically introduced Wenders as a filmmaker who had explored a lot of the same themes as Kieslowski (stuff like modern day alienation, anxiety, etc.).

so, at the end of the presentation, when it came time for questions, i decided to raise my hand. someone passed a mic to me but the wireless connection went screwy all of a sudden and things were confusing for about thirty seconds, to the point that i kinda lost my train of thought. to make matters worse a camera with a bright light on top of it was pointed in my face. when the technical problem was rectified, i wnet ahead and asked my question, but it came out sounding much more roundabout than i'd worded it before the interruption. (i wanted to know why, if wenders and kieslowski had such similar themes that many of the characters in kieslowski's films came across as much more stern than in wenders'. i wondered if this had something to do with the fact that kieslowski's characters were more relegated to their surroundings, while wenders' characters had more mobility, or if this had anything to do with the difference between german and polish sensibilities or simply the two filmmakers personalities.) the english moderator guy cut me off because he thought i was just asking a wenders question. then a tremor went through the auditorium. to save face and make my point, i interjected and quickly finished the question. somehow i'd recovered, and my question seemed sensible enough in its entirety, but wim wenders wasn't particularly nice to me with his response. instead he was standoffish. i wasn't crushed or demoralized, but i felt silly, as if somehow i was being a painted as a dumb american asshole or dishonoring the great kieslowski becuase my question didn't come out so well. so after the anticlimatic answer i just said fuckit and went to go smoke a cigarette before the presentation was over. then, aboard the shuttle from the the house of world cultures to potzdamer platz, i saw one of the guys responsible for my being there (he'd personally selected me from several filmmakers). he tried to give me the evil eye, but i looked right back, as if to say, "what?"

so, whenever i see kieslowski's name i think about this incident.

i like his films, those that i've seen anyway, but i don't love them. and i take serious issue with his statement that the film is inferior to the novel, and that if he had a chance to do it over he would've become a surgeon instead of a filmmaker. (i can see his point, given the demands and limitations of the film world, but it seems calculatedly contrarian of him.)

not crap, a waffle or two.

kieslowski has reached a much higher level than Wenders.
The films of wenders have never really touched me emotionally.His caracters just have never involved me the same way of Kieslowski`s.

...And yes,I know It's all about your own personal, highly subjective experiences.