Recent Video Selections.
I’m in the midst of yet another truckload of unpaid but very necessary writing work just now, so here’s a quick note about the kinds of videos I’ve been renting from the constantly surprising Planet Video store down the road in Mount Lawley.
A little note about Mount Lawley, folks. It’s always been popularly perceived as the Jewish suburb, although I’ve never seen any evidence to support that. One time when I was briefly back in Perth I was looking for bagels. I’d become very fond of eating some amazing bagel concoctions for lunch at a gourmet sandwich shop near where I worked in Sydney. Everyone in every supermarket and bakery where I asked said the same thing, “Go to Mount Lawley. It’s the Jewish suburb. They must have bagels.”
I’ve been all over much of Mount Lawley and I still haven’t found those bagels. I still can’t find them in any other store either. This city is funny like that. Things you’ve become accustomed to finding in other Australian cities just don’t exist here, or if they do then not in a way that you’d anticipate.
Perth’s a little like the planet Bizarro, where Superman is wont to go to visit his counterpart Bizarro Superman, and where everything is the precise opposite of what you’d expect.
Anyway, back to the story. Krzysztof Kieslowski—those Poles, are they taking the piss with their spelling or what?—is my very favourite film director. If I could write and make little movies that contained a fraction of the values, insights and emotions of his then I’d die happy.
I’m collecting his Three Colours trilogy on DVD as they’re released in Oz in a very plain Region 4 edition—just the movie, no DVD extras. So far I have Red, and the distributor tells me White is available some places, and Blue will be out soon. Releasing them in reverse order—very Bizarro.
Krzysztof Kieslowski: Three Colours trilogy—Blue, White and Red. Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité.
I went down to Planet Video the other evening to rent both videos containing Kieslowski’s Decalog series of 10 short films. Someone else had beaten me to it, but I was surprised to find a really battered old copy of The Double Life of Veronique.
“Each of us is matched somewhere in the world, by our exact double—someone who shares our thoughts and dreams.”
That’s the core premise of the film. I’ve come across pairs of people like Veronique in my travels, half of each pair alone in another city, unaware of the other’s existence. People who not only look uncannily alike—I have a pretty good photographic memory—but who share remarkably similar character traits. I’ve often wondered if there is any connection between such people.
I haven’t watched The Double Life of Veronique yet but I am really looking forward to it. Maybe I’ll put it on right now. I can watch Kieslowski’s films again and again.
This note didn’t turn out to be so quick after all, did it? All grist to the writing practice mill, though.
Krzysztof Kieslowski: The Double Life of Veronique. It seems to have only been released to video on VHS so far.
4:44:54 PM 
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