The Decalogue
dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski
Opens Fri Nov 3 at the Varsity.
IT IS NO surprise God’s death happened concurrently with the rise of Cinema. How could the creator compete with something so seductive? After all, who in their right mind would choose the dry, formal education of a Sunday Morning at the Church when the option of a jolting, dazzling education of a Saturday Night at the Cinema beckons? Who would choose the teachings of Christ over those of, say, Cary Grant? No, Christianity had no chance against the Cinema–right from the start, religion was doomed to play second fiddle to sparkling celluloid. (Judaism, by the way, stood a much better chance, being an institution of primarily social rather than moral function. So the Jews could happily found their alternate religion on terra firma, knowing that there would be no hell to pay. As evidence, there could be no such thing as, say, a Lutheran Hollywood mogul.) We must accept that Cinema is the world’s most dominant religion, with Islam as a close second.
And yet, there remain pockets of obstinacy out there who refuse to convert. Fortunately, in Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s masterpiece, the ten-hour Dekalog, we have the perfect vehicle to save those poor souls who may still be laboring under the arcane yoke of Christianity. Kieslowski’s Dekalog is something akin to a testament: The least of its qualities is that it is a masterpiece. Indeed, its ambition alone would seem to guarantee its permanence in the canon of cinema.
Created in 1988 for Polish television, Dekalog (or, in plainer English, The Decalogue) seeks to translate the Ten Commandments into hour-long cinematic equivalents. Each hour ostensibly takes one of the Commandments as a thematic seed from which the drama grows; of course, for those who have seen Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy, it should come as no surprise that the director’s realization of these thematic underpinnings is often more poetic than literal. Which is a good thing: The prosaic approach to a film of the Ten Commandments could not possibly match The Decalogue‘s elegant resonance.
Take the very first chapter. I am the Lord, your God; thou shalt have no other Gods before me. Kieslowski and screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz–who shares a writing credit for the entire series–sketch the tale of a father and his precocious son using their computer to measure the thickness of ice on a pond, to see if it is fit to skate on. With all variables locked down, the computer gives its answer (it is), and the inevitable is set in motion. And yet, Kieslowski uses the plot of this first chapter merely as a framework into which to embed larger moral discussions: At one point, the young child asks, “What is God?” “What do you feel?” his aunt counters, holding him to her breast. Throughout The Decalogue, these abstract equivalents of the Ten Commandments serve to keep the thematic overtones in line, while freeing the filmmakers to trace the outlines of contemporary Polish life, to examine the very state of humanity in a specific time and space.
In one chapter, an impotent man urges his wife to have an affair, then anguishes himself with its consequences; in another, a jealous ex kidnaps her former lover on Christmas Eve, keeping him until dawn; in another, a daughter uses information left by her dead mother to try and provoke an affair with her father. Throughout, Kieslowski and Piesiewicz brilliantly transmute the abstract ethical dilemmas implied by a breaking of a Commandment into specific dramatic terms, so that each economical hour feels like an epic traverse of the landscapes of the soul. But it doesn’t stop there! Indeed, while each episode stands strong on its own, it is only as a full series that The Decalogue acquires its requisite, sublime impact.
There are several factors to this: First, Kieslowski sets the entire series in one massive Warsaw apartment block, each story taking us inside one more world within the world. As we spend more time in the great cave formed by the concrete walls of the block, the sense that we are witnessing a cross section of the human condition becomes inescapable. The narratives become universal, the morality spiritual. He also strings a random presence throughout the series–a cipher who appears in all but one of the chapters. “He leads the characters to reflect on what they are in the process of doing,” Kieslowski describes. “Though I would not go so far as to say he is meant to imply the presence of God.”
And yet, the presence of God suffuses The Decalogue. It is in the faces–those sky-bright eyes!–that Kieslowski so wisely uses to anchor the film. It lingers in the soft pauses between people as they try to speak through their confusions. It is in the bleak winter light that pours through the ugly, modern apartment windows. It is as if God realized the new medium is Cinema, and that in order to reach the masses, one must speak with its forms, in its language. Indeed, one realizes at the conclusion of this life-changing work of art that we have been in the presence of something quite holy.
The Decalogue plays Fri Nov 3-Fri Nov 16 in two-hour increments at the Varsity Theatre. When this film played at the Grand Illusion two years ago, men got into fistfights over limited tickets and women had to be turned away crying. If you miss this, you will go to hell.