Not arbitrarily (nothing in Kieslowski's work is arbitrary), "Red" takes place in Geneva, splitting the geographic and cultural difference between the first two films and honing the scope of the entire work only to broaden it, finally, beyond all borders. As succinctly described by Kieslowski's longtime co-writer, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, "Red" is "a film against indifference." It is Kieslowski's "Tempest"; the judge, a formidable magician and authorial stand-in, is his Prospero. Like Shakespeare's play, the film is aware of its own theater, and of its place as the summation of an oeuvre.

Undaunted by the tremendous emotional and moral valence he has by now invited us to expect, Kieslowski controls the film magnificently, putting to use the shapely formal precision he took an entire career to work out. After sustaining the increasing complexity and momentum of the whole trilogy by riffing and rhyming and ducking and dodging through it, he builds a celestial climax, beautifully braiding the three installments into a moving and deeply satisfying conclusion.

For this final magic act, Kieslowski unleashes his tempest on a ferry full of more than a thousand people, rescuing only a handful -- who happen to be the trilogy's main characters. By sparing his darlings, and bringing them safely together, he claims a small but potent victory for the director's prerogative, not to mention the last of the revolutionary concepts, fraternity.

Kieslowski never subscribed to the pompous idea of filmmaker as an engineer of human souls. He began as a documentarian but eventually found it disingenuous and gave it up, choosing only to intrude on lives that he'd invented (most often in collaboration with Piesiewicz). But the documentary work served him well. He became an illusionist with no illusions, a conjurer of relativity but not a relativist. For all his empathy, the truth about people could not help but make him an ironist.

What made Kieslowski a master, though, was that he remained capable of awe, and made a conscious effort to transcend pessimism, to manage the unmanageable proportions of life -- while bowing to its beauties and mysteries -- through his own creative process. "Three Colors" is a supreme example.

It's almost funny how everything in these films, even ugliness, is beautiful. That's not the gloss of French money, it's a declaration from the director. Watched in order of their release, the films progress through a literal warming, a triumphal emergence from isolation into community, from the numb, bloodless chill of "Blue" through the pale fire of "White" to the blushing, blossoming heat of "Red." And it happens largely without the detachment and abstraction of lens filters; instead, mostly, through objects within the environment: food wrappers, clothes, upholstery, vehicles, furniture, walls. What fun (or madness) it must have been to work in Kieslowski's art department! Like the chapters of the "Decalogue," the "Three Colors" films were photographed by various cinematographers but governed by a single vision.

In each case, the title color is vibrant and portent, variously associative: Blue can be water or ink or memory, white can be pigeon shit or a wedding dress or Warsaw ice and possibility, red can be blood or bubble gum or enchantment. The synthesis of the three, inevitably, is a perfectly balanced composition. As Matisse said, anybody can throw two colors together, but it takes a master to add the right third one.

Of course, the visual arrangement of the French flag was old news by the time Kieslowski came around. But the notion of colors as concepts was a deceptively simple way of making explicit the filmmaker's career-long crusade for a deeper perception of everything that remains beyond our perception.

This wasn't just art-house hogwash. Kieslowski invented a cinematic vocabulary for these films so he could speak more clearly to his audience. When he winks, it's a magician's wink, or a favorite uncle's -- or a favorite uncle who is a magician, not the dime-store kind but a quiet and sublime old wizard -- telling you: "Pay attention now, here comes something special, just for you." When he allows a perplexing gesture, it's to remind you to stay engaged, to wonder about the perplexing gestures that surround you, and to get some life out of them.

After "Three Colors," Kieslowski retired; he'd become impatient with every part of making movies that wasn't casting or editing (not surprising, given the doting just-rightness of his casts and cuts), and he was exhausted from the trilogy's merciless production schedule. He said he simply wanted to read and smoke in peace. It had a whiff of "OK, I can die now," and so he did, too soon thereafter, at the too-young age of 54. In some ways it seemed all right for him to go. He'd covered everything.

OK, maybe not. We still have our moral agonies and spiritual quandaries, our confounding and unknowable possibilities. And, although we might not have realized it until he showed us, we have the elastic and resilient heart to deal with them. In truth, Kieslowski hadn't really stopped working. He and Piesiewicz had a new trilogy in mind, about Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The audacity! Again, the tantalizing promise! Were they serious? Kieslowski suggested that he was, reportedly telling Miramax head Harvey Weinstein that Hell clearly had to be set in Los Angeles.

After her fashion show in "Red," Valentine meets the judge in the now-empty theater; they're alone together, nestled gorgeously in a swath of plush-red seats, with the tempest just outside batting at the doors. Valentine says she feels like something important is happening around her and she's scared. The judge takes her hand and says, "Is that better?" It is. And it is to Kieslowski's credit that even with all the magic and maneuvering that has brought him, his characters and us to this point, nothing can match the power of this simple gesture. It will always be the pinnacle of a work of art that's out of this world, but so close to home.

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