How do you go about portraying the Ten Commandments on film? Do you show the Exodus, or do you go about trying to establish the way the Ten Commandments can be experienced (and broken) in the lives of ordinary men and women? And if you do the latter, how do you go about doing this? Is there too much to go through for one movie? The answer for acclaimed director Krzysztof Kieślowski was simple: write a story based upon each of the commandments. Instead of making them as independent films to be shown at the theatre, they were written as one-hour segments to be shown on Polish television. Collected together, they are Dekalog (The Decalogue).
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aEb91Q0vraU
While the Dekalog technically is a television mini-series and not a movie, two of the episodes were lengthened to become A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love, establishing its credentials to be included in this series about film.
Each of the stories take place in a common apartment complex. Main characters in one story might be secondary characters in another. The stories are varied. Some have more immediate connection to the commandment they relate to than others. Some are better done than others. Watching them, the artistry involved is clear throughout. While one could label them as morality tales, it’s often very difficult to know what the ultimate lesson of the story is meant to be. The theme might be clear, but what you are supposed to get out of the story remains unclear. It leaves you thinking and questioning what you saw. And that seems to be a part of the point: the stories show the kinds of questions we have to face in our daily lives, and they also show how difficult it is to actually find any sufficient answer to them.
This makes watching the Dekalog a difficult process. The dark foreboding in the stories combined with the bleak outlook on life you see portrayed in them makes the viewer very uncomfortable. The first story, Thou Shalt Not Have Any Other Gods Before Me, tells the story of a man who has given his loyalty and allegiance to science. He bases decisions based upon what his computer tells him. One day, he lets his son go out skating on the ice, believing it is safe. Yet, in the end, his son falls through the ice and dies. It’s very easy to see how this story connects to the first commandment. However, once you get to the second one, Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Lord the God In Vain, things get confusing. This is a story of a married woman who has been having an affair and is now pregnant. Her husband is infertile and does not know she is pregnant. He is sent to the hospital and is close to death. The woman keeps asking the doctor involved whether or not her husband will live; eventually she tells the doctor why she is asking: if the husband will live, she will have an abortion. The doctor is put into a moral quandary, because what he tells her might determine who will live and who will die.
The seventh story is another odd case. Based upon the commandment, Thou Shalt Not Steal, it revolves around a young child who has been told that its mother is its sister and its grandmother is its mother. The real mother eventually wants the truth to be known. She abducts her child from its grandmother. The question one is left asking: who is the one doing the stealing?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WFBXkB6JAMYThe Dekalog is an important, but difficult series to watch. I don’t always agree with what I think the director wants to say with each episode. Yet, for those who can deal with difficult works of art, ones which challenge them, I would highly recommend the series.
3.5/4 stars.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In