The Double Life and the Sense of What Should Be

Every once in a while a film comes along that defies one's ability to render a description. In 1991 I saw the film The Double Life of Veronique by Krzysztof Kieslowski. It is a film that grabs you from the very beginning both in sound and image. The first shot of Veronique singing, the song she sings, the way she raises her head to sing in the slowly building downpour, her voice, at first with others then by itself as her solo notes rise high, echoing off the walls. Sounds and images that simply do not leave you. I remember, very clearly, walking out of the theater with my friend, neither of us able to say a word. We merely looked at one another, gave a kind of half smile and found our way to a cafe where we sat silent for quite some time, drinking our coffee and thinking about this extraordinary film. After a while I remember saying to my friend that it seemed as if each moment carried the weight of its sense of purpose, of its reason for existing, the importance of that moment in relation to all other moments in Veronique's life. It is a film of small acts that lead to greater realizations, and, after all, isn't this life? There is a zen aspect to this film, a sense of awareness, of being aware much in the way I have heard the Buddhist monk Tich Nach Hahn speak of being aware of the moment you are in, of whatever act you are committing at that moment, be it brushing your teeth or drinking tea. Double Life is grounded in the moment. The actress, Irene Jacob, who plays both Weronika and Veronique, says the film is about "the simple actions one performs in a day: watching raindrops slide down a window... actions that are part of our daily lives but you don't notice them." She goes on to say "And solitude can sometimes bring intense moments of fullness." It is these small, but intense moments that can sometimes change us irrecoverably that is a good part of the heart of this film.

There are a handful of films I can think of that have this kind of feeling about them. Christ Stopped at Eboli, Before the Rain, My Night At Maud's to name a few. Films that embody a certain spirit, a sense of what is important, a sense of how things should be. I am reminded of a poem by Osip Mandelstam:

More Delicate than delicacy
Your face,
Whiter than purity
Your hand;
Living as distantly
From the world as you can
And everything about you
As it must be.
It must all be like this:
Your sorrow
And your touch
Never cooling,
And the quiet catch
of not complaining
In the things you say,
And your eyes
Looking far away.

Yes. Everything as it must be. That is a good way of describing The Double Life of Veronique.

The Criterion Collection has released The Double Life of Veronique in a gorgeous edition that includes interviews with Kieslowski, Jacob, Zbigniew Presiner (his composer) and many others who worked with Kieslowski on his films. The quotes from Jacob above are part of the interview she gives on the 2nd disc, an insightful, intelligent interview. There is also a beautifully designed booklet with critical articles, a piece on Jacob and an excerpt from Kieslowski on Kieslowski. Criterion has such a splendid collection of films, probably the best in the business. www.criterionco.com.