Krzysztof Kieślowski's

The Double Life of Véronique

On the double, intuition and

the art of making choices

Guillem González Noguer

Polish Contemporary Film I

Teacher: Andrzej Pitrus

Krzysztof Kieślowski (1941, Warsaw – 1996, Warsaw) is one of the most important film-makers

of the second half of the 20th century, and The Double Life of Véronique is one of his most

acclaimed movies. In this work, I will introduce his figure and the spirit of his cinema, always

aiming to the better understanding of The Double Life of Véronique, the movie that I will analyse

afterwards.

1. Kieślowski’s biography and his cinema1

Many critics say that Kieślowski’s nomadic childhood (his father suffered tuberculosis and, thus,

they had to move often from town to town) influenced his character and his movies – maybe it is

reflected, without going any further, on Weronika and Véronique: both decide to move away

from their cities and go to Cracow and Paris, respectively. On 1962, he graduated from the

Warsaw College for Theatre Technicians – although he ended up producing very few theatrical

plays, at least compared to his amount of work as a film-maker. After two unsuccessful attempts,

on 1964 he is admitted on Łódź Film School, and he finishes his studies on 1968.

Since the late 1960s and during the 1970s, he was a documentary film-maker; some of his

most important documentaries are From the City of Łódź (1969) and First Love (1974).

Personnel (1975) was a turning point on his career: not only it was his first feature-length film

and his first approach to narrative cinema, but it also meant the beginning of a long-term

association with the Tor film studio in Warsaw. After an accident while filming Station (1981) in

Warsaw’s train station, he decided to definitively move to fiction film-making. During the late

1970s and the 1980s, among others like Agnieszka Holland or Krzysztof Zanussi, Kieślowski

was one of the most important directors within the Cinema of Moral Anxiety movement: Polish

“films characterized by contemporary theme, realism and the social initiation of a young

protagonist” (Haltof 2004: X). Although Kieślowski has never been a political film-maker -I will

discuss this later-, one could say that films like Camera Buff (1979), Blind Chance (1981) and

No End (1985), his most important works of these days, were politically, or at least socially,

involved.

1 The content of Kieślowski's biography is taken from Marek Haltof's The Cinema of Krzysztof

Kieślowski.

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Kieślowski achieved international success with his television series Decalogue (1988),

which supposed another inflection point in his film-making career. But one cannot forget the

influence that the historical context also had: Poland started his transition from a communist

system to democracy on 1989. In the cinematographic sphere, this meant that the nationalised

industry was reformed into a new system, in which state patronage coexisted with private

initiatives. Film-makers and other artists had to face new challenges in the new Polish society: on

one hand, they were not carrying a social mission anymore, so they had to redefine their role; on

the other hand, they were also freed of political censorship – but a new censorship emerged:

economical, market censoring. As a result of all this, a new debate emerged among film-makers

and movie critics: should Polish cinema go on as it had been -national, particular- or should it

adopt the European standards -universal, cosmopolitan-? After Decalogue’s big success in

France, Kieślowski had no problems to attract French capital and start his new period of co-

productions, which begins with The Double Life of Véronique. Most of the critics divide

Kieślowski’s work in two stages: the first, realistic one -which includes both the documentaries

and the Cinema of Moral Anxiety era-, and the second, more aesthetic and metaphysical, that

includes The Double Life and the Three Colours’ trilogy (Blue, 1993; White, 1994; Red, 1994).

Marek Haltof expresses quite well the differences between the two groups of movies:

Kieślowski’s change of direction can be described as follows: from functional to ‘expressionistic’

photography, from unobtrusive soundtrack to overwhelming musical score, from ordinary

characters in everyday situations to literary characters set in a designer’s world, from the

particular to the general, from outer to inner reality and from realism to ‘artiness’. A director of

detailed realistic observations becomes a director of metaphysical experiences (Haltof 2004: 111).

Although there is an essential difference between the movies of the first era and the second ones,

there are also many links between both periods. Some of his main themes are repeated

throughout his movies; for example, the hard choice between a calm, relaxed life and the pursuit

of one’s dreams is explored in Camera Buff and in The Double Life of Véronique; both No End

and The Double Life deal with the concept of premonition and non-verbal communication. The

Double Life is also illustrative when it comes to show how Kieślowski thinks again his own

work: Weronika and Véronique are based on a character from Decalogue 9, Ola, a girl that

decides to risk her life and have a dangerous surgery to be able to sing; A Short Film About

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Killing (1988) and A Short Film About Love (1988) are based on Decalogue 5 and 6,

respectively. Since No End, Kieślowski started collaborating with the screenwriter Krzysztof

Piesiewicz and the composer Zbigniew Preisner – and he had other usual collaborators, including

actors, cinematographers and editors. These examples should be useful to understand that a

unifying feature of Kieślowski’s films is his understanding of film-making as an auteur, like

François Truffaut and others conceived it: “Kieślowski was in full control of every stage of the

cinematic process; he not only directed but was also the scriptwriter or co-scriptwriter of all his

films, and he worked closely with his editors in the cutting room” (Maltof 2004: XII).

The question about Kieślowski’s movies’ political involvement is quite difficult to

answer. Polish art, and especially during the second half of the 20th century, has always been

very politically and socially engaged – due to the complexity and hardness of Polish history:

During the communist period, film and other art forms performed the role of safety valves in the

controlled, corrupt political system. Film-making was a platform on which political debates were

carried out sometimes openly, sometimes in Aesopian language. Politically active film-makers

such as Andrzej Wajda were always at the foreground of Polish life. Artists felt an immense

responsibility; they were also accustomed to a situation in which their voices were heard and

analysed by the people and by the authorities (Haltof 2004: X).

But Kieślowski’s case was different: almost none of his films are openly political nor he was

connected to politics in his public life. It goes without saying that he was not a supporter nor a

defender of the system – he just wanted to remain independent of everything and everyone. This

created a lot of misunderstandings with the Polish critics, that always wanted to read his work

through a critically political glass, like the rest of his contemporaries. Maybe it is difficult to

interpret his co-productions this way (although, as I will discuss in the next section, some critics

perceived The Double Life of Véronique like a political allegory), but some of his first movies

managed, through mere observation and showing reality, to be critic with the communist system.

Even some of his movies were banned, like Blind Chance or From a Night Porter’s Point of View

(1977)2. But the fact is that none of his movies was explicitly against communism nor proposing

2 Blind Chance was filmed in 1981, but it was not released until 1987. From a Night Porter’s Point of

View was shown in many festivals, but it was impossible to show it on television.

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any solutions to its problems – at least he was not as critic as Wajda, Holland, Zanussi and other

emblematic Polish film-makers.

2. On The Double Life of Véronique

As with most art house films, it is not easy to decide which is the main topic of The Double Life

of Veronique. Is it the motif of the double, the Doppelgänger? Or is it the possibility of its

existence? Is intuitive, non-verbal communication the main issue? Or is it the always difficult art

of making choices? In this section, I will analyse The Double Life of Véronique’s most important

topics and how Kieślowski develops them cinematographically3. Finally, I will focus on the

possibility of a political interpretation of the movie.

Annette Insdorf considers that the main topic of The Double Life is precisely the double:

“The film’s central question seems to be blatantly metaphysical: can there be -in God's spectacle,

which includes individual ‘damage’- a double who prepares us for survival? Or might some of us

be the double who is setting the stage for another to live more wisely?” (Insdorf 1999: 131).

Since the first two scenes of the movie, which show first Weronika and then Véronique,

Kieślowski establishes a powerful, magic connection between the two girls: both of them are

looking at something from a special standpoint4, both of them listen to their mothers. The

seasons -winter in Poland and spring in France- and also the order of the scenes -first Weronika

and then Véronique- give the viewer the feeling not only that they are linked, but that, somehow,

Weronika’s existence precedes Véronique’s. The rest of the movie extends this connection

feeling: the movie has two parts, the Polish and the French, each one with its language and its

location, but there is just one double heroine with (too) many things in common5 – and it also

prolongs the Weronika-precedes-Véronique feeling: just after Weronika dies, Véronique feels

3 I will not focus on the plot of the movie, as it is already summarized in such websites as IMDB and in

the bibliography I have used.4 Weronika looks at the world upside-down – and this motif will be repeated throughout the movie, like

when she has her first heart attack and meets the exhibitionist, when she is dead and looks at the sky and,

in the next scene, Véronique also looks upwards. Véronique looks at a leaf through a lens – the lens will

appear again many times, like in the crystal toy ball, and the leaves appear also when Weronika has her

first heart attack. By the way, the leaves are quite symbolical: they have two sides, like a coin, and both

sides share the same nerves, like the two Véroniques.

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suddenly “as if she were grieving”, and then in the next scene she decides to quit singing, as if

she had learnt, thanks to her double, that it would be better for her. Somehow, through their

magical connection, Weronika and Véronique communicate.

In folkloric tradition, the Doppelgänger is not only somebody’s ghostly double, but also

an evil one: “According to lore, Doppelgängers can cause the physical person to die if they are

seen. It is also believed that they appear to steal souls and take their place in life” (Haltof 2004:

118). Although Haltof establishes a link between the usual Doppelgänger idea and the one

developed by Kieślowski (Weronika's death might be connected to the fact that she saw her

double in Cracow), it is obvious that the Polish director’s definition of Doppelgänger goes

beyond its usual interpretation. To begin with, although they do not know each other, one cannot

say that Weronika or Véronique are ghosts – both have obviously real existences. And, again, it

is impossible to resolve who is the double and who is the original one: although Véronique

seems to learn from Weronika, one cannot forget that they were born the same day and also that

the original title of the movie is in Polish, not in French. The truth is that Weronika seems to help

Véronique, allowing her to learn from her experience: would a common Doppelgänger do that? I

think that Kieślowski wants us the viewers to understand them as different, independent but

connected instances of the same character, not just as one character with its dark shadow. And,

thus, although the possibility of having a double emerges as one of the topics of the movie, it is

not the main one – in fact, it serves a bigger purpose, as I will discuss later.

The issue of intuitive, non-verbal communication and premonitions is quite relevant too –

and it is also connected with the idea of the double. This is Joseph G. Kickasola's main topic

choice: “This abstract beginning [Véronique's first scene] will initiate a critical scene and a chain

of abstract imagery that will bolster the primary theme of the film: the idea of intuitive, non-

verbal communication” (Kickasola 252). After Weronika's death, the subjective camera from the

coffin's point of view would imply, as Haltof points out, that she is not entirely dead, or at least

that something remains after her death and travels to France; only after her death the two

Véroniques are able to intuitively communicate. Following this train of thought, Weronika would 5 Some of the things that Weronika and Véronique have in common: both are sensuous with their lovers

and affectionate with their fathers, they are left-handed, they like to rub their eyelids with a ring, they

have a beautiful, talented voice, they like Van Den Budenmayer’s music, they travel from the province to

the capital city, they wear red gloves, they use lip balm, they have a plastic ball that reflects, they see an

old woman carrying bags with difficulty...

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be also a metaphor of premonition: on Véronique's second scene, she decides to quit singing

following only her irrational instinct. But another important character has also many things to do

with non-verbal communication: Alexander. The puppeteer manages to communicate with

Véronique without direct contact with her – he verifies “whether it was possible”, as he says, that

a woman responds to the call of an unknown man. Véronique, as she had done before with

Weronika's, answers again the call – takes a second important decision, following her instinct

again. And the figure she meets, Alexander, is quite mysterious: he is a puppeteer, he writes

children books and he is preparing a book about a woman that responds to the call of an

unknown man. Although Véronique is firstly disappointed, she finally accepts him and falls in

love with him – she declared it to her father, even before actually knowing Alexander. Somehow,

Alexander is the link between Weronika and Véronique: on one side, she confesses him that she

has always felt that she was in two places at the same time and that she has always sensed what

she had to do; on the other side, he shows her Weronika's picture – he makes her realize that she

actually has a real double. The sudden grief that she feels echoes the sadness that she felt in her

first scene, after Weronika's death – it is as if she now realises not only that she has a double,

Weronika, but also that she is dead. Véronique's third decision does not seem influenced by

anybody, neither Weronika nor Alexander: she decides to abandon him and go back to her

father6. If one remembers the mortal consequences of seeing one's Doppelgänger, maybe

Véronique senses them too, so although her double is already dead, she feels that staying around

Alexander, who seems to know too much about her double nature, is dangerous. The scene with

the two Véronique's dolls -the last scene where Véronique and Alexander are together- seems to

confirm this: Alexander is going to write exactly Véronique's story, and he has two dolls

“because during performances he handles them a lot” and “they damage easily”. Like somebody

waking up from a dream, Véronique realizes that she is not entirely free, that she has a creator -

an author- above her, somebody controlling her decisions – that is why she runs away7.

6 One could consider that Véronique makes another important decision: she decides to help her friend and

declare against her former husband on trial. But this second storyline is not really connected with the

main one, that is why I have eluded it.7 This act of becoming aware of a new ontological position in the world has its roots in literature: for

example, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza become knowledgeable that they are novel's characters in the

second part of Don Quixote; this kind of meta-fictional tricks are also used by Luigi Pirandello or Miguel

de Unamuno, in literature, but movies like Being John Malkovich (1999) or Adaptation (2002), and even

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So, if the double is not the main topic of The Double Life, is it intuition or non-verbal

communication? I would not say so. Instead, my belief is that both themes are used for a broader

purpose, the main topic: the art of making decisions. Both Weronika and Véronique, as doubles,

have to face the same decisions -either they choose their vocation, singing, or a calm life-, and

thanks to non-verbal communication with Weronika, Véronique manages to take the proper

decision, quitting singing. What is more important, Weronika and Véronique's heart injury makes

this decision crucial: it is a life or death choice. But, as I have said in the previous paragraph,

Véronique makes two more important decisions during the movie: the first one is following

Alexander's call; the second one is leaving him. Slavoj Žižek adds something interesting about

Véronique's last choice's interpretation:

what is so traumatic for her [Véronique] in the puppeteer’s performance is not that she sees

herself reduced to a puppet whose strings are pulled by the hidden hand of Destiny but that she is

confronted with the fundamental unconscious choice by means of which every one of us has to

choose her or his existential project. Her escape from the puppeteer, back to the safe haven under

the wings of her father, is her escape from freedom (Žižek 2006).

Žižek's interpretation differs a little bit from mine: I argued that Véronique leaves him because

she is afraid of his knowledge, precisely of seeing “herself reduced to a puppet whose strings are

pulled by the hidden hand of Destiny”, but he adds that this decision is more important because it

entails choosing her existential project – so, by refusing to choose, she refuses her freedom.

Véronique's choice of escaping from freedom is forced, because, as I said before, it is a life or

death choice. Her choice is something like a Hubson's choice: a free choice in which only one

option is offered (unless one considered her conscious death a real option).

Žižek's article has another interesting point about the art of choosing: “The topic of

choice between alternate realities in Kieślowski’s narratives is clearly allegorical: it contains a

reference to Kieślowski himself. Was not his choice that of the Polish Weronika – aware of his

heart condition, he chose vocation and then effectively died of heart failure ” (Žižek 2006).

Choosing between a passionate, vocational life or a calm one was not only a topic throughout all

Kieślowski's film-maker career, but a topic in his life itself – as a matter of fact, he ended up

retiring after the première of Red, on 1994, two years before dying. For Haltof, The Double Life

The Matrix (1999-2003), or The Truman Show (1998) also face similar situations.

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contains a similar message related to Kieślowski's film-maker career: “For Kieslowski, this film

also marks a radical departure from his early filmic essays to polished international and apolitical

co-productions. This is a turn toward privacy and 'calm', a retreat from the pressure of politics

that is openly manifested in the Polish part of the film” (Haltof 2004: 120). Like Weronika

during Cracow's demonstration, Kieślowski has had enough of politics: he only wants a calm

life, like Véronique's.

But some authors have given The Double Life of Véronique a different interpretation, not

autobiographical but political, although it seems that politics are not the main subject of the

movie. Maciej Pawlicki8 establishes a parallel between the death of Weronika and the end of

communism in Poland; then, what Véronique (the West) would learn about Weronika (the East)

is not to repeat political mistakes (communism). Pawlicki says that the film is “a sad film on the

occasion of Europe's unification” (Haltof 2004: 119). The death of Weronika and her extension in

Véronique's life would also mean the rebirth of Poland, a second chance for Poland and the

Eastern Europe countries. From this point of view, communism is a dream that inevitably leads

to a nightmare.

But does pursuing a dream always have to end with a catastrophe? I think that it does not

necessarily have to end like that – and, in fact, not to a sudden catastrophe, like Weronika's death,

but to a painfully slow disaster, like the one that the governing of ideology leaded Poland and the

USSR to. Taking risks and making choices always involve chances of being wrong, of course.

Kieślowski's solution to this problem, the idea of the double, is just a fictional, idealistic solution

– in real life, Weronika had to suffer to teach Véronique the lesson.

Another final political interpretation that I can think about also relates Weronika and

Véronique to a country, but this time to the same one, Poland. Both Véroniques would be

different periods of time of Poland: Weronika would represent the communist era, in which a

dream, communism, is pursued, but Véronique would be the democratic Poland, that only seeks

a peaceful life, away from fighting and revolution. Longing for peace, as we have said before,

was also an important topic in Kieślowski's life.

8 From Haltof 2004: 119.

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3. Bibliography

Haltof, Marek. 2004. The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski: Variations on Destiny and Chance.

London: Wallflower.

Insdorf, Annette. 1999. Double Lives, Second Chances: the Cinema of Krzysztof Kieślowski.

New York: Hyperion, Miramax Books.

Kickasola, Joseph G. 2004. The Films of Krzysztof Kieślowski: The Liminal Image. New York:

The Continuum International Publishing Group.

Žižek, Slavoj. 2006. “The Double Life of Véronique: The Forced Choice of Freedom”. Booklet

accompanying the 2006 DVD release, consulted on:

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1733-the-double-life-of-veronique-the-forced-

choice-of-freedom.

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