Three Colors: Blue Response

The film Three Colors: Blue was an emotionally charged drama which told the story of a woman who lost her family after a fatal car crash. The overall tone of the film, along with the dramatic lighting, the sudden and violent orchestral pieces, and the recurring use of the color blue (which has long symbolized melancholy) emphasize repeatedly that this story is sombre and full of harsh and unpleasant turns for our protagonist. The most notable recurring theme is the use of explosively loud bursts of the unfinished symphony Julie's husband had been composing before his death. These sounds are often used as a means of conveying the scene has elicited some sort creative response from Julie, who then goes on to help finish the piece at the end of the film, but I personally found the music to be mostly superfluous in the context with which they were used. Typically, we assume such jarring shift in audio to be indicative of a scene change, but often times it was thrown in oddly in the middle of an awkward pause in dialogue, almost as if to shout "Look! This here, this is an important scene! Julie is experiencing emotion or something!" While it was necessary, and it's meaning and intent are clear enough, I felt as though it's actual execution could have been carried out better, and that some of this meaning was almost lost in context. Otherwise, the audio did help meld together what would otherwise have almost seemed like a disjointed series of events which somewhat lacked in rising action, climax, and falling action. This is not a flaw of the movie, however, as it reflects real life--which rarely actually has such clean cut instances.