Decalogue

I completed Decalogue by Krzysztof Kieslowski and I must say what an experience. And I must also say that Kieslowski now came close to being my favorite director, just standing next to Bergman. There is more to speak about Decalogue as a whole than in parts. And its what I will be doing here. I will try to touch each of the ten episodes briefly but talking about entirely of the great effort. For me biggest question about life and humans still remain the moral questions, the questions like what is more important to us- love, freedom, quality or anything else. Decalogue addresses these questions brilliantly.

One more thing which I really appreciate about Kieslowski is his choice of topics and his sense of awareness about people in general. In one way or the other Decalogue seems to say that we all have histories, we all have some past if not interesting but worth contemplating. All the Decalogue stories happen in the same polish apartment and characters of other stories crisscross at times. In Decalogue, Kieslowski has essentially generated a world of his own, which is infact very universal. There are other things which occur in all parts which try to link the stories in a very wholesome way. One of those is a young man who is just a mute observer in all the parts and camera focusses on him at the most crucial hours of the episodes, the points where the characters are just about to go in a dilemma which is most of the time relate quite precisely to the commandment that episode is addressing. Now since we have come to the commandment thing, I don't consider them to be the driving force in each of the episode, lot of times one episode touches on more than one commandment and you feel more resonated by other questions raised than those by the commandments. One doubt which I had before watching this ten part tour-de-force is its tone, I may assure you with all my contemplation that it not religious or anti religious or irreligious. There is more, much more to them, than the one liner commandments. Most of the times you see coincidences, miracles, odd situations, moral dilemmas on screen which are infact amongst Kieslowski's favorite themes. and all this one hour drama have the trauma of being a human, the pain or pleasure of being in a world which is not predictable, the suspense of our so-called mundane lives.

Moving on this, I find one more interesting thing about Krzysztof Kieslowski, he usually takes a risky road, most of the directors usually have in mind some very basic judgments like God doesn't exist and there is nothing like miracle. Kieslowski doesn't fear from any of these, he presents lots of situation which compels us to think the either way and more importantly with almost equal force. He takes the risk of such type of situations and let the viewers decide for themselves. Decalogue is such important artistic and philosophical document because of this reason also.

One more thing which is constantly becoming a very fertile source of thinking for me is the influence of others on you. I am not talking about the usual bad and good influence, but how life of others influence us, This is one of the constant theme in all the episodes of Decalogue and the factor that glues each of them in a unique fashion. Decalogue seldom takes stands but through the faces of characters which makes them stories rather then documentaries and we feel the versatility of the art of story telling in all its flair, power and youth.

I will move on a brief on each of the episode and what it generated out of me.

Part 1: This is a story about a mathematician father and his very brilliant son. Its a story about fate, unpredictability and human helplessness in the hands of nature's randomness. If I ever forced to pick one episode that I found very close to myself, it would be this one. There are questions about God to questions about death. I started with this episode and I had to wait for about an half to move for the next one.

Part 2: This is a story about a women whose husband is on death-bed and she is carrying a child of another man. She goes to the doctor to ask whether her husband is going to die, Doctor answer will decide who will live, Child or the husband. There are two big questions posed in this episode, first is the role of Human as God, doctor in this case. The second which is ever bigger is the morality issue. The tone of this episode is very somber. This may be regarded as one of the most intense part of Decalogue. Krzysztof Kieslowski always uses figurative to depict the situation of character. This part also has images of an insect struggling for its life in which it miraculously succeeds.

Part 3: Before watching this one, I was thinking how Kieslowski is going to show something like 'Honor the Sabbath day'. This is the story of a married taxi driver who meets his ex-lover on Christmas eve, that unfolds lot of things. The tone here is not particularly playful but has the tension of intimacy. This part conveyed something that is very remote to honoring the Sabbath day, it shows how such days segregate the happy and the lonely, and our basic desire of human contact.

Part 4: This episode is most bold in its theme and content. Here is a story of a young girl who finds a letter by his father titled 'To be opened after by death'. The opening of this letter changes the equations by opening up some secrets inside and outside the letter. This part is must-see for brilliant relationship portrayal and the impact of our hidden past on us.

Part 5: This is a gem. This about killing and its implications. This part shows two killing, one of long, brutal and raw and second one is short and systematic. This episode starts with very straight dialogues that argues 'Punishment is revenge'. Its a story about a killer getting a death sentence and getting killed. This particular part is very disturbing and one of the few that doesn't end in any hope.

Part 6: This one is about love. Can there exist love in some pure form that doesn't need any other special effects to kindle. Is there love devoid of anything we usually associate as depiction of love. Can love sustain without any contact. Do contact corrupt love. Here is a story about peeking Tomek, who watches a beautiful woman, Magda through his telescope, and his pleasure lies in just seeing. There are questions about voyeurism that are also raised in Red but in very different context. In the later part we see Magda do the same to Tomek, do we become the person we love (This was the question that was raised by Liv Ullman character in Bergman's 'Hour of the Wolf').

Part 7: This part is more about the question of ownership than stealing. Here is a girl whose daughter (born when she was a teenager) thinks that her grandmother is her mother. This part searches morality with in the characters and they finds them struck in their own situations. Can you steal something that belongs to you ? The last scenes of this episode is quite heart-breaking and ends with a brilliant close-up of the little girl.

Part 8: This part is most direct in its voice. This raises the questions of morality and circumstantial behavior in very clear voice. This is a story of a old professor who teaches at University. One day a Polish decendant girl comes to Poland and attends her lecture. In that lecture she tells a story about a Jewish girl at the times of war that pulls out some old strings. This episode has very direct reference to part two.

Part 9: This part about an impotent husband who spies on his wife and her lover. When his wife learns about it, she tries hard to save her marriage. This part meanders on the thin lines between sex, love and morality. This episode tries to explore love. There is dialogue which goes it's "in one's heart, not between one's legs"

Part 10: This part is the lightest of all. Its a story of two brothers who gets a treasure of rare stamps after their father dies. This is sort of a black comedy that shows how money brings in complex liabilities and we tend to tar the long old relationship for greed of money.

The themes mix and match in all the episodes, but the common aura has lingering questions of morality that encompass all the parts and that's where we relate to them. Kieslowski never tries to guide us through the rules rather here we see the weaknesses of human heart and mind, and effect of these on our lives and can we ever 'use' these rules to lead a morally perfect life.

Decalogue attains something that may be only a far dream for others. Seldom can moving images have such impact on us and you wonder how much can be said in just ten hours.

Kieslowski's Motives

When we talk about goodness of human spirit and the existence of people with such qualities and the need of this spirit in the society, we come across many works that romanticize the issue and miss the whole point. Also some other movies that claim to celebrate the human spirit and its unending power, tend to harp on it as a success solution or a portrayal of the moral-code that goodness is always rewarded, which not only trivialize the whole point on one hand but also belittle this spirit to something which is very narrow and close-ended. Most of the times, the concept of goodness is used to show that the good people are the ones who are the happiest and the end-winner of the banal zero-sum game that negates the basics of goodness and its desperate need in the society. Goodness of people living in society leads to the concept of fraternity with the people we share space and interact in our day-today lives. It is of-course a moral issue, and an issue that decides whether we can be called a good-social-animal or not.


In his last film and also the last part of his coveted color trilogy, Red, Kieslowski explores how we relate to others and given his penchant for co-incidences and fate playing on people, closely examines how these godly coincidences bring us together and once we are together, given our emotional differences, how our quotient of goodness and longing for emotional attachment works. Being the final film of a great auteur's career, Red gains more importance and relevance of being his final voice. Red, being the last film of the trilogy gives an open ended closure to the theme of the relationship between our inner and outer world and how these two criss-cross, putting us on the either side of a thin line. In my view, it is improper (if not futile) to talk about the films of the trilogy separately, it is more wholesome and rewarding to watch and analyze all three of them together, putting pieces of one to complete the puzzle of other thus giving an extra dimension to the former and vice versa.

White explores the concept of equality in terms of an emotion we all understand/relate to some extent, love, and asks us a question whether we are equal in love, or are we held captive by the passion that runs through our hearts. Blue, in its definitive somber tone, talks about the freedom from past and asks us whether being physically alone, leave us emotionally solitary too or it intensifies the effect of physical departure, are we free to govern any of these. Red the closing swan song, gives some answer to some of previously raised questions and in a way seems to convey that emotional bonding to people relieve us and even the driest of the human being have the desperate need for nobler emotions and bonding.

Relating the trilogy and the characters do give a great deal of insight on what Kieslowski ultimately wanted to say. Like music in Blue, shown as a uniting force for the geographically scattered beings, so is the pain, suffering, loss and happiness and all such emotions that make us create it. In a simple scene in Blue, Julie notices a street singer playing a tune exactly same as what her late husband wrote for his project on Unification of Europe and wonders the universality of such feeling and also gives a consent that her loss is not only to herself but universal and widespread, a sense of unification with others. Similarly in Red, the life events of the old-judge and the new-judge repeats not just to make the plot more interesting but to make it more intriguing that we all are being faced by similar situations, but we react to them differently, also almost angelic-virtue of Valentine in Red do suggest that child-like quality in all of us that inspires us to save a dying dog, feel guilty about listening to others private conversation, try hard to make-up with a ever-rough lover and suggest that this child within us is saved even in the final blow of the tempest.

Kieslowski's take of morality is often very personal , you can watch Decalogue to understand what exactly it means, here morality is not a dictum or set rules, lots of the things that seem immoral may be the most humane things to do. If we consider morality with respect to the color trilogy, we get some beautiful insights, In White, Karol, tricks his lover to love her till eternity, I understand that this episode should not be taken literally, but as a fantasy of love, as a subjective morality of a person who being humiliated by his lover, imprisons her, not because of jealousy or hatred, but out of love, and suffers in the same way that she is suffering. The tale in White has little moral significance to general morality but on contemplation it do brings points of equality in the labor of love. Red's take on morality comes from the mouth of the judge, who spies on his neighbors and didn't even justify the motives but he don't consider it bad or criminal, but later after interaction with Valentine he writes letters to his neighbors exposing himself. In way it suggests that our morality changes with interactions we have. Also in A Short Film about Love voyeurism is used as a way to connect people. Also in a very sublime scene, after listening to a conversation of a husband's deceit, Valentine decides to tell the wife but when she goes there she finds out her revelation will disturb the happiness and the apparent family bliss of the woman, thus she steps back. Judge's take on this was that the wife will know about it eventually but Valentine's subjective morality takes her back. Also this episode brings about more, the impact of the decision of a total stranger in one person's life.

One more point that Kieslowski makes in the trilogy in general, particularly in Blue, is about self-obsessiveness with our emotions and condition. Julie is fully immersed in her loss, also the Judge of Red is also left cold by the romantic betrayal, on the contrary Valentine, although also suffering because of her decaying love affair and her brother, yet she has not closed onto herself. Julie drenched with her past and memories of loss and her efforts to leave everything behind, do try to segregate her from the world, the place she dwells in and really need to be in. Julie, when called by her friend in the bar, breaks her bloodless chill, seeing that she could be the one to give solace to her. In White, in a wonderfully panoramic scene with the vast expanse of virgin white ice, Karol with his brother, goes on running and falling on the ice. His brother says "I feel like a kid again", Karol nods "Me too", this light-hearted comic scene do give me an impression of world's as a slippery ground where fall again and again and laugh about it. Also White in some way talks about the impossibility of revenge, at least in case of love or where we really connect to people, this seemingly hopeless thing gives lot of assurance about life in general, and love in particular.

In a recurring and vaguely connecting scene in the trilogy, an old man or woman tries to put a bottle in a recycling bin. In Blue, Julie, lost in her own world, don't even notice it. In White, Karol, getting a pretty bad deal from the world, although sees it, smiles wickedly, almost implying that somebody is even worse than he is. In Red, Valentine after seeing the old woman goes and helps her to put the bottle in the bin. In my view, the color trilogy, as a whole works on moral and empathetic platform with unknown possibilities of life thrown in and a person trying to steer through them. I do feel I have humanized the trilogy to a severe extent, but I also feel and undersatnd that Kieslowski wanted it to interpreted in terms of humble human proportions.