Three Colors: Blue (1993, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski) follows the story of Julie de Courcy, a grieving widow of one of France’s best musical composers of the time. Conflict arises when an unfinished composition hits the public and no one knows who will finish it now that Julie’s husband has passed away. The film is largely focused on the process of grief and what it means to try to move on with life after the death of a loved one. This is no more apparent than in the scenes in “Coming Home” and another scene that sees Julie waking up with a sudden flash of blinding blue light. Kieslowski utilizes multiple different techniques to give the viewer both visual and audio representations of what grief is to our main character, Julie. In Three Colors: Blue, the meta-diegetic sound, light, camera movement, and the use of a prop motif are used to symbolize Julie’s internal sadness that she is forced to either face, or try to escape.

Firstly, let's look at the meta-diegetic sound in “Coming Home”. Meta-diegetic sound refers to sound that doesn’t have a source coming from within the world of the film. Or rather, usually music or bits of score that are meant to be taking place within a character’s head. In “Coming Home”, Julie finds herself in the main area of her house. In front of her is a music sheet and a grand piano. In a POV shot, the audience is put in Julie’s shoes as she reads the sheet music with her finger. As she does, a sort of Mickey Mousing effect brings the meta-diegetic score crashing in suddenly. Mickey Mousing refers to character movements accentuated by non-diegetic score ques, or simply when the character makes a movement, it’s followed by a sound effect that the characters in the world of the film usually can’t hear. In this case, everytime Julie runs her finger past a note, the score plays the highs and lows of the notes like a symphony in Julie’s head. This effect combined with the POV almost comes off as torment in a way, because Julie is so focused on the music sheet. Even as the notes run out, when Julie runs her finger over the empty spots, music still plays as if to show she knows what the rest of the composition will be; seemingly hinting at the fact that Julie was the real writer all along. The meta-diegetic sound in her head comes to an abrupt stop when Julie closes the piano cover, slamming it shut. This snaps her back into the world of the film with a diegetic sound that  represents her trying to escape her mind, the score, and her grief. 

Earlier in the scene, Julie comes across a small blue chandelier. When she sees it, it reminds her of her husband. Not only is it blue, very clearly a deliberate choice by director, Kieslowski, to represent her mental state and internal turmoil surrounding the tragic circumstance that took her husband and child from her. In a moment of intense sadness and anger, Julie rips the chandelier down breaking it as the blue beads hit the wood floor below. It makes sense to assume the reason she would do this to such a beautiful house piece is because in that moment, nothing is more important to her than escaping her past trauma.

This whole scene undoubtedly contains examples of Julie choosing to escape the grief that haunts her. In the scene where Julie suddenly awakes from her sleep however, she doesn’t necessarily get to choose whether she wants to face it or not, rather she is forced to confront it. In this scene, Julie is sleeping at the start. The shot is static with no movement at all until suddenly a bright blue blinding light overtakes the screen and Julie is forced to bear witness. The camera movement in this scene is also very interesting because it appears to be a Jib shot that tracks left before rotating. The whole ordeal feels very supernatural and it’s unclear whether or not it is in Julie’s head or not. Since the viewer cannot see what Julie sees when the light appears it’s clear that she has no choice but to face it. While this is happening the meta-diegetic score appears, as mentioned before but much louder and more pronounced. This scene comes earlier in the film so this is most likely meant to represent the freshness of the wound Julie experiences from her husband’s death. The blue of course, representing her grief but the score paired with the light just feels like Julie experiencing her husband’s presence, whether or not it’s real or in her head is up for debate. One thing though is certain, Julie’s grief overtakes her in this moment and what the viewer sees is the visual representation of that. 

In Three Colors: Blue, the meta-diegetic sound, light, camera movement, and the use of a prop motif are used to symbolize Julie’s internal sadness that she is forced to either face, or try to escape. In “Coming Home” and the scene where Julie wakes up, the meta-diegetic sound used shows Julie’s link to her husband, or more specifically the car accident that took her family away from her. This paired with the color blue and the cinematography, is how the director chooses to give the audience a visual representation of the grieving process. 

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