The Decalogue

Dekalog (The Decalogue) (1988) is a Polish film series, originally made as a television miniseries, directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and co-written by Kieślowski with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, with music by Zbigniew Preisner. It consists of ten one-hour films, each of which represents one of the Ten Commandments and explores possible meanings of the commandment—often ambiguous or contradictory—within a fictional story set in modern Poland. The series is Kieślowski's most acclaimed work and has won numerous international awards, though it was not widely released outside Europe until the late 1990s. Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick described it as the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Production

Though each film is independent, most of them share the same setting (a large housing project in Warsaw) and some of the characters are acquainted with each other. There is also a nameless character (Artur Barciś), possibly supernatural, who observes the main characters at key moments but never intervenes. The large cast includes both famous actors and unknowns, many of whom Kieślowski also used in his other films. Typically for Kieślowski, the tone of most of the films is melancholic, except for the final one, which (like Three Colors: White, which features two of the same actors) is a black comedy.

The series was conceived when Piesiewicz, who had seen a 15th-century artwork illustrating the commandments in scenes from that time period, suggested the idea of a modern equivalent. Kieślowski was interested in the philosophical challenge and also wanted to use the series as a portrait of the hardships of Polish society, while deliberately avoiding the political issues he had depicted in earlier films. He originally meant to hire ten different directors, but decided to direct the films himself, though using a different cinematographer for each.

[edit] Themes

The ten films are titled simply by number (e.g. Decalogue: One). In English, they are sometimes referred to^{[citation needed]} by the commonly used short forms of the commandments based on the King James Bible text (see below). Kieślowski said^{[citation needed]} that the films did not correspond exactly to the commandments, and never used their names himself. However, they appear^{[citation needed]} to follow the Roman Catholic enumeration of the commandments, which is based on that in Deuteronomy.

• One: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. A university professor (Henryk Baranowski) trains his young son in the use of reason and the scientific method, but is confronted with the unpredictability of fate. Reason is deified with tragic results.
• Two: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. A young woman (Krystyna Janda) is pregnant, but asks her husband's doctor (Aleksander Bardini) to make a medical pronouncement of the fate of her husband, because the child she bears is not his and she would like to abort the child if her husband survives.
• Three: Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. A family man (Daniel Olbrychski) abandons his family duties on Christmas Eve to deal with a former lover in a crisis (Maria Pakulnis).
• Four: Honour thy father and thy mother. Uncertainty about her real parentage complicates the bond between a young woman (Adrianna Biedrzyńska) and her father (Janusz Gajos).
• Five: Thou shalt not kill. A brutal and seemingly motiveless murder brings together a drifter (Mirosław Baka), a cruel taxi driver (Jan Tesarz), and an idealistic lawyer (Krzysztof Globisz). This is the only one of the films with an explicit political stance, reflecting Kieślowski's opposition to the death penalty. An expanded 84 minutes cinema version of this episode was released as Krótki film o zabijaniu (A Short Film About Killing).
• Six: Thou shalt not commit adultery. A naive young man (Olaf Lubaszenko) spies on a stranger (Grażyna Szapołowska) through her window and falls in love with her. An extended 86 minutes feature version is Krótki film o miłości (A Short Film About Love).
• Seven: Thou shalt not steal. A young woman (Maja Barelkowska) abducts her own child, who has been raised by her parents as her sister.
• Eight: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. A Holocaust survivor (Teresa Marczewska) confronts an ethics professor (Maria Kościałowska) who once refused to help her on the basis of this commandment. The story was based on an experience of the filmmakers' mutual friend, the journalist Hanna Krall.
• Nine: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife. A man who has become impotent (Piotr Machalica) discovers that his wife (Ewa Błaszczyk) has a lover. (A minor character in this film, a young singer with a heart condition, inspired Kieślowski's and Piesiewicz's next film, The Double Life of Véronique.)
• Ten: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods. Two brothers (Jerzy Stuhr and Zbigniew Zamachowski) inherit a valuable stamp collection but exchange some of them for worthless stamps. When they realize this they try to get them back...

(This list follows Catholic and Lutheran tradition; most other Christian sects and Judaism divide the commandments differently, listing the prohibition against "graven images" as the second, and combining the ninth and tenth into one [1]. Poland is predominantly Catholic.)

Kieślowski expanded Five and Six into longer feature films (A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love), using the same cast and changing the stories slightly. This was part of a contractual obligation with the producers, since feature films were easier to distribute outside Poland.

[edit] External links

• The Decalogue at the Internet Movie Database
• Facets Multi-Media: The Decalogue (synopsis, images, interview)
• The Decalogue at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films list
• In depth analysis of the series
• Roger Ebert on The Decalogue