SOURCE: "To Save the World: Kieslowski's Three Colors Trilogy," in Film Comment, Vol. 30, No. 6, November-December, 1994, pp. 10, 12-13, 15-18, 20.

In the following essay, Kehr traces the movement from isolation and solitude to acceptance of community and interdependence in Kieslowski's Three Colors.

When Red, the concluding episode in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy, was screened at this May's Cannes Film Festival, the 53-year-old Polish filmmaker took the opportunity to announce his retirement. He now had enough money to keep himself in cigarettes, he told a group of American journalists through an interpreter, and rather than subject himself to the strain and bother of making films, he would prefer to sit quietly in a room by himself and smoke. Perhaps he would watch a little television, but never, never would he go to the movies.

Like most of Kieslowski's public statements, his proclamation of retirement should be taken with a grain...