Showerpress

I recently watched Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs: ‘Bleu’.  It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen, so beautiful and desolate without losing that sensuality that some philosophically ’sad’ films possess.  I recommend it.

This film is music. Its theme is music, its principle character is music.  The colour blue recurs like symphonic motifs.  The film’s soundtrack holds much of the power in the film, and the soprano part is an abridged version of 1 Corinthians 13, printed below. As the finale overwhelms the end of the film, we witness fragments of bodies intertwined, pressed against glass and filtered through translucent objects…

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.