The Evidence of Things Not Seen

This chapter has two alternative starting points, a different one for each of the comparisons that form its double backbone: that between Krzysztof Kieślowski's Trois couleurs: bleu (Three Colours: Blue [1993] [hereafter Blue]) and Michael Haneke's Code Inconnu (2000); and that between Kieślowski's Trois couleurs: rouge (Three Colours: Red [1994] [hereafter Red]) and the films of Lucrecia Martel. Each comparison was sparked by noting moments of strong echo between the Haneke film and Blue, on the one hand, and Red and Martel's The Headless Woman (La mujer sin cabeza) (2008). ¹ The main common denominator between these films is the relationship between sound and the categorical imperative of love for neighbor, sound being the primary means whereby the known and visible extends into an off-screen invisibility redolent of mystery, other people, or an Other ranging from the human degraded by a process of othering to the Divine. In the Christian context, of course, the Divinity itself takes upon itself the most extreme effects of othering—human degradation and abjection—in Christ's Crucifixion, prompting the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews to enjoin fellow Christians to “go forth to him without the camp, bearing his reproach” (Heb. 13:13; AV).