"Three Colors: Red" at 25
Saturday, November 23, 2019 at 6:30PM 
by Lynn Lee
Transfixed. Transported. Exhilarated. These are words I don’t use lightly when I’m talking about movies, but they all apply to my reaction the first time I saw the final installment of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy. And in large measure they still do. Even if the initial wonder has given way to a comforting familiarity, few films capture the universal human yearning for connection and kinship (or fraternité, the unifying theme of Red) as vibrantly yet delicately as this one.
I first saw Red some years after its initial release, at a special screening at the university I was attending. I went in knowing very little about the film except that the friend I went with had seen it before and spoke of it in glowing terms. He noted that in an ideal world I’d have seen the preceding chapters, Blue and White, but thought I’d enjoy Red even without having done so.
He was right.
In fact, I occasionally wonder if Blue and White – both of which I admire rather than love – suffered by comparison when I saw them later. Perhaps I’d have a different take if I’d watched the trilogy in the intended order. But I don’t think it would have altered my strong personal affinity for Red, which quickly became one of my all-time favorite films...