15 Thematic Trilogies From 15 Directors

Claire Denis’ Colonialism Trilogy: “Chocolat” (1989)/”S’en fout la mort” (No Fear No Die, 1990)/”J’ai pas sommeil” (I Can’t Sleep, 1993)
In Claire Denis’ feature debut “Chocolat,” a young woman returns home to Cameroon, which in turn summons memories of her French colonial upbringing during the 1950s. The director has noted repeatedly that it mirrors her childhood years and it shows, the film capturing images and moments of displacement and class disparity and rendering them visceral. For her following two films though, “S’en fout la mort” (No Fear, No Die) and “J’ai pas sommeil (I Can’t Sleep),” she ventures outside of that initial sensory experience while still tapping into those same outsider concerns.

The three films are what Denis calls her “trilogy about colonialism and its aftermath”; they seek to offer entryways into the perspective of immigrant protagonists—black African males, often played by Denis collaborators Isaach De Bankolé and Alex Descas—struggling to stay afloat in the West Indian and Eastern-European communities of France. The two latter films are bleak, distressing works, the rarely screened “No Fear, No Die” following two men into the cockfighting world, and “I Can’t Sleep” finding three main characters in Paris struggling to stay afloat as murder suddenly interjects. Largely stripped of Tindersticks tracks and the striking impressionistic style she would later adopt, Denis nails a tone of social realism in all three films, quietly observing marginalized protagonists subtly and silently shifting into despair—a psychological state that results in increasingly harmful actions. But Denis is aiming for a universality through specificity in these films as well, as she outlines with the Chester Himes quote opening “No Fear, No Die”: “Every human being, no matter his race, whatever his country, creed, or ideology, is capable of everything and anything.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Trois Couleurs/Three Colors Trilogy: “Blue” (1993)/”White” (1994)/”Red” (1994)
Unlike many of the looser triptychs on this list, Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Trois Couleurs” was entirely conceived as a thematic trilogy with his constant co-screenwriter, Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Based on the three political ideals represented in the colors of the French flag—liberty, equality, fraternity—the films were “Three Colors: Blue,” “Three Colors: White,” and “Three Colors: Red” and aside from a briefly unifying conclusion, the only connecting element overall remains Zbigniew Preisner’s beautiful musical score.

“Blue” stars Juliette Binoche as a mother grieving and grappling for reasons to live after her family dies, eventually discovering their deaths as a kind of emotional freedom. The more maligned “White,” an unlikely comedy, features Zbigniew Zamachowski as a man who attempts to restore equality to his life while enacting revenge on his aloof wife (Julie Delpy). And “Red,” starring Irène Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant explores the unlikely friendship and eventual bond—fraternity—between a model and a depraved retired judge who spies on his neighbors. As is Kieślowski’s wont, the finale film deeply charts his fascination with past lives and the metaphysical; it also wraps up the trilogy with an intuitive suggestion that all souls—including the seemingly disparate characters in these three films—are all universally linked and connected.

James Gray’s New York Crime & Family Trilogy: ”Little Odessa” (1994)/“The Yards” (2000)/”We Own The Night” (2007)
One of filmmaker James Gray’s central preoccupations, especially as evinced early on in his career, is the destructive and traumatic nature of family in our lives. But understanding wisely—even at the age of 21—that getting a family drama made wouldn’t be easy, Gray injected a genre element into all his family narratives and over 10 years a trilogy eventually formed. His debut in 1994 brought “Little Odessa,” a crime drama about a professional killer (Tim Roth) who returns to his Brighton Beach home and family (Edward Furlong, Maximilian Schell, Vanessa Redgrave), and it introduced a tragic theme he would return to repeatedly: we cannot escape our past, and almost always our pasts and our very nature is built from our (often dysfunctional) families.

Next came “The Yards” (2000), a more sprawling and operatic take on a similar subject. Also a tragedy set in Queens, New York, it centered on the central notion of corruption in our society and how its various tentacles destroy a family and the ex-con son desperate to fit into it (with the excellent cast of Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, James Caan, Ellen Burnstyn and Faye Dunaway). Employing a more Shakespearean bent to another Queens-set crime tragedy, “We Own The Night” was a policier focused on a mediocre king (Robert Duvall as a NYPD chief) and his two disparate sons (Joaquin Phoenix, a club manager and Mark Wahlberg as a fellow NYPD cop). This film employed similar dark themes and aesthetics, but played with the notion of how obligations to family can crush the hopes and dreams of those who dare choose another path. “Two Lovers” would return to Brighton Beach, but instead as a love story, ditching his foot-in-the-door crime interests arguably in pursuit of a more pure emotional and character-based form in similar stories (see: his upcoming drama, “The Immigrant”).