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from Jim's Real Detroit Column THE DECALOGUE |
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Most foreign film lovers have seen director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs (his trilogy released in 1993-1994 composed of Bleu, Blanc, and Rouge) and his spellbinding thriller The Double Life of Veronique (1991). But until very recently, it has been almost impossible to view in any venue his ten-part miniseries The Decalogue. Made for Polish TV, The Decalogue has rarely been shown theatrically in the U.S. (its ten-hour running time would make booking at most commercial theaters out of the question) and its video release was only realized about thirty days ago. Like several other foreign films done for TV--Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz or Edgar Rietz’s Heimat 1 both demand more than fifteen hours of your life--The Decalogue is also well worth the investment.
The project was conceived as ten films about the Ten Commandments, with each segment filmed by a different up-and-coming Polish director. When Kieslowski and his writing partner Krzysztof Piesiewicz (who also cowrote Veronique) finished the scripts, Kieslowski decided that they were so good he had to direct all ten himself. He did utilize a different cinematographer for each film so that they would have individual styles. Although each segment’s title is a commandment, and all ten are used, most of the films involve ethical and moral situations that relate to more than one commandment. The common thread among all ten is a Warsaw high-rise apartment building and the characters who live there (some of who show up in more than one segment). The most famous of the episodes is part 5, “Thou shalt not kill,” which was expanded to feature length and retitled A Short Film about Killing. The same was done with part 6, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” which was renamed A Short Film about Love. Although each segment can stand on its own, it’s best to start at the beginning. |
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I. “Though shalt not have other gods before me”---the series starts off with an almost gleeful tone that turns devastatingly tragic as a man and his genius son decide to trust their “all-knowing” computer with icy life and death calculations. II. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”---a woman, pregnant with another man’s child, asks her dying husband’s doctor to predict her husband’s fate, with the result deciding whether or not she will abort her fetus.III. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”---the most nonsensical of the bunch, as a crazy woman tries to keep a married ex-lover away from his family on Christmas Eve, feeling it will make her sane. IV. “Honor thy father and mother”–when a girl prematurely opens a letter from her father marked “not to be opened until my death,” their relationship changes drastically. V. “Thou shalt not kill”---a young punk brutally kills a cabby, his trial and hanging force the issues amorality, forgiveness, and capital punishment.. VI. “Thou shalt not commit adultery”--a young postal employee keeps a peeping-tom eye on his sexy neighbor in a segment that shows Kieslowski in top form. VII. “Thou shalt not steal”---echoing themes from episode 4, a young girl is kidnapped by her real mother from her grandmother (whom she believes to be her mom).VIII. “Thou shalt not bear false witness"---episode 2 is presented as a real-life matter for debate by a lecturer who must face a Jewish woman she refused to hide during the Holocaust. IX. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife”---a guilt-ridden, unfaithful husband discovers he is impotent and encourages his wife even the score. X. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods”---two losers inherit their father’s stamp collection, most in Poland, with darkly comic results. |
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Whether you watch all ten at once or one at a time, in or out of order, you’ll be well rewarded for your time. |
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