The movie Blue portrays a woman who is wrapped up in a world that isn't really her own. Juliette Binoche plays a mother and wife who lives her life for her husband and daughter. When she looses them both unexpectedly in a crash she finds herself trying to free herself from the identity that she once had. I find it interesting the way Krzystztof uses the color blue throughout the film. The color blue in the french flag represents freedom. There are however multiple types of freedom not just political freedom. Julie is trying to gain freedom from living in her husbands shadows. He was the famous composer and she was his wife. Although you could guess that she probably helped him compose his music if not completely write it for him because throughout the film she would get lost within herself and the music would get loud as if she were composing in her head, she still wanted to be free and create an identity for herself. If it was her and he had died then the image of the famous composer died with him and she clearly wants to free herself from those shadows. I think that's why she sold everything in the mansion and only took the one thing that was of most importance- the blue chandelier that is left to assume was her daughter's. At first I wasn’t sure why she would sell all that she had and only keep one item that belonged to her daughter. Then I thought about how she must have felt. She was never really her own person. Imagine being the wife of someone famous, imagine the standard you would have to hold up to. I’m sure there were personal stresses on her also and when she lost them she lost herself. She lost the identity that was hers for so long and then she was faced with the conflict of creating her own identity. Throughout the film there are several shots of Julie's reflection in some one's eyes, a window or mirror. I believe this is representative of her own personal freedom. Is she trying to find freedom from herself? Is she struggling with finding her own identity? I think that we all have done this at some point in out lives. Haven’t we all questioned ourselves by saying “who am I really and what purpose do I have?” I think what Krzysztof is trying to portray in this film is that freedom has many different layers and types and that freedom can mean different things for different people who are in many different situations or places in their lives.
The scene where Julie finds the rats in the house and then goes to visit her mother in the nursing home drives home the theory of freeing yourself from personal things in your life. She asks her mother if she was ever afraid of mice when she was little, she was trying to find herself again, find who she was before the fame and fortune came along. Had she been caught up in that life for so long that she forgot what she was afraid of? I think it was kind of ironic that she found out that her husband had a mistress all that time when she assumed he was in love with her. I think that it showed her that she didn’t really know who she was and made her question her identity even more. I think it drove her to rid herself of that past and move forward to her future and that’s why in the end she gave the house to the mistress who was carrying her deceased husbands child.
