The Decalogue (1988) - Krzysztof Kieslowski

I realize that I’ve already briefly mentioned the first three episodes in last month’s film journal so forgive me if I overlap a bit here.  Conversely forgive me if I don’t pay enough attention to those first three parts as well.  Finishing this ten part series can be exhausting.  I believe the first time I saw it was in the span of about two days, so it was a much more leisurely two weeks this time around.  Since then I’ve had the pleasure of watching both A Short Film About Killing (1987) and A Short Film About Love (1988) which are expanded segments from V and VI respectively.  From what I can gather A Short Film About Killing actually premiered before the series originally aired, so for some audiences this was their first look at Kieslowski’s newest project. 

The Decalogue V - One guess what commandment this is about

Kieslowski has stated that A Short Film About Killing isn’t specifically anti-capital punishment which many people took it for.  Instead he simply stated that he’s anti-killing of any kind.  He doesn’t forgive his killer nor does he believe he should be killed.  I think it’s interesting that Kieslowski goes to show in this episode that the man killed wasn’t a particularly good person.  There is the moment when he honks his horn causing a dog to run away from it’s owner around a crowded street.  We see the almost mischievous tactic that the killer takes to get the cab, lying to another person about which direction he was heading so he wouldn’t have to share.  It’s almost like he’s saying “These two belong together” or rather maybe the driver Waldemar is the killer Jacek grown up.  Neither person is good by any Christian definition of the term, but in Kieslowski’s world neither one of them deserves to die.  There’s a reason why this is often cited as the best of the series.  It makes you wonder just how many of his characters are good exclusively?  Perhaps he is quoting the new testament here “He who is without sin, cast the first stone”. 

The next segment was the basis for A Short Film About Love which has something of an ironic title when you see the episode.  Like the previous episode, the main protagonist is a young man.  His name is Tomek, and this time he isn’t a menace to society.  However as Jacek was an outcast from the country, Tomek is an outcast in a different way as an orphan.  He’s simply a quiet guy who keeps to himself and spends his days, and nights longing for the woman across the window named Magda, rarely if ever bothering to actually let her know this.  His tactics are in turn juvenile and obsessive.  He steals her mail, spies on her, calls the gas company over when she has a man over, even takes a milk route to get closer to her.  Magda in turn is rather gracious with her affections for anyone who comes around and sets about humiliating him when she gets the chance.  It backfires a bit but it lends itself to a theme that starts to pop up in the alter episodes of The Decalogue and that is one of redemption.  The ending of the segment where he has returned to work and she visits him at the post office has an open ended quality to it.  He tells her he’s no longer peeping, and we’re left wondering if maybe now that he’s grown out of his juvenile school boy infatuation if they will try and build a real relationship?  The story is hardly uplifting but coming after the devastation of most of the earlier episodes it feels like the series is becoming more positive.

The Decalogue VI 

This “happy ending” idea pops up again later in the series particularly the last two episodes.  In episode nine an impotent man finds out his wife is cheating on him and when he thinks they’ve run off together at a ski resort he tries his hand at suicide.  However he doesn’t die and we’re left thinking that now that her affair is done, the two may be able to work on their plan of adoption and possibly build a stable relationship.  Nothing is certain but they’re both still standing and in some ways the themes of voyeurism, a man who can’t have the woman he’s watching, a failed suicide, and possible reconciliation make this a fitting companion piece to part VI. 

In the final episode, which could be considered the whole “Honor thy father and mother” commandment shows two dissimilar brothers who are united by their father’s death.  Keep in mind that neither sibling was entirely close to him and they don’t recall having any real fond memories.  At first they rummage through his stamp collection wondering what they can sell it for, and after a collector visits them he convinces him that it would be sacrilegious to destroy their father’s lifetime of work by selling them off.  The brothers soon agree and they get more and more paranoid about the collection and adopt more of their father’s traits.  Since I’m spoiling everything in this review feel free to know that in typical Kieslowski fashion the worst thing imaginable happens to the brothers and the collection, or nearly the worst.  However in a great moment both brother show that they purchased the same new set of collector stamps from the local post office unbeknownst to the other.  They are keeping the tradition alive, and somehow I can’t help but feel like they’ll get the collection back. 

It’s easy to see why these endings seem downright optimistic after so much heart break.  I suppose the episode regarding a Jewish girl who confronts the professor who refused to take her in back in 1943 starts off as a downer but that never really plummets to the depths of human emotion in the same way.  In his world everyone has their reasons, and her reasons were very sound.  Still her life’s work afterwards leaves a bit of a clue as to the guilt that she has been carrying around ever since.  When she visits the man who was supposed to shelter her in his tailor shop he is ambivalent towards her.  He doesn’t want to talk about the war and for him it’s over and done with.  It’s a segment that you can imagine a lot of people who grew up in Poland during WWII would feel today.  The war has hung over the continent for decades and he would rather not even acknowledge it anymore.  However he doesn’t do it in a way that’s deliberately mean, just politely keeps turning the conversation back to his line of business as a tailor. 

Then there’s that episode with a mother whose daughter was raised as a sister (VII), and what a joy that is.  I’m speaking sarcastically, I know this is hard to do via type but if you’ve seen the episode you would understand.  I mean Kieslowski is great at putting his characters in an ethical dilemma and letting us speculate on what we’d do in that situation.  Not to say he doesn’t offer his characters their own choices but the entire series is designed to provoke our own thoughts and ideas regarding the situation.  In the second episode (which is mentioned in VIII) we are put to the task of wondering just how we would handle a situation where we’re pregnant by a man we love who isn’t our husband, meanwhile our husband is dying.  This time it’s a question of how would we feel if we had a child at a very young age and it was raised by our parents as a sibling?  How would we resent our parents for that, or how can we display the appropriate affection for what is rightfully our own child? 

I’ve mentioned previously that the episodes don’t correspond directly with the ten commandments in a neat and orderly fashion.  The episode that I feel is about honoring thy father and mother could easily be X or IV, which deals with a girl and father whose mother has been dead since she was born.  She finds, or rather speculates that her real father might not be the man who raised her, yet rather than read the note that may or may not reveal the truth she decides it’s better to burn it.  Now some stranger things happen in the episode, but to me the last episode is just as much about honoring the deceased parents, yet that episode is also about coveting thy neighbors goods and well you get the point. 

The entire project is exhausting but also exhilarating.  It’s themes and ethical questions almost make you feel like you’ve come out of the film smarter and possibly a better person.  Most of us won’t be faced with these specific problems in our lives but like any philosophical or ethical question it’s more about the process of self examination and clarifying our own moral code and how we would react.  Would we give up a kidney for a stamp?  What if that kidney would save a young girl’s life?  How about if the stamp was the only one in existence?  I guarantee probably no one reading this will ever be put in that situation, but well ask yourself what would you do?