Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski made The Decalogue, a series of 10 one-hour films based on the Ten Commandments, for Polish television in 1988. Since that time it has rarely been screened commercially, other than in a handful of film festivals.
Pacific Film Archive is providing a rare opportunity to see these great films on the big screen, and over a series of just a few days, which is essential for retaining the mood of the work as a whole. The screenings are part of a larger career retrospective spanning the late Kieslowski’s impressive career.
Each film in The Decalogue is a separate and distinct creation, though they are all of a piece, united by theme and tone. It can be seen as a novel in the form of a series of short stories, like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio; each film can be appreciated individually, yet together they create a unique and self-contained world, with shared locations and characters establishing each drama as part of a larger framework, as part of the larger drama of humanity.
The notion of a series of films based on the Ten Commandments may sound tedious, suggesting an overly intellectual and theoretical approach to the medium. Like Kieslowski’s Colors Trilogy—Blue, White and Red, each film deriving its theme from the symbolism of the French flag—it may give the impression that the director is more interested in themes than characters. But Kieslowski is not that sort of director and The Decalogue is not that sort of project.
This not an intellectual exercise; these are not merely illustrations of the Commandments. Rather, Kieslowski uses the Commandments as a springboard, a starting point for an examination of universal themes and crises.
Each film in the series is like a finely crafted short story, containing in one hour a remarkably efficient and emotional narrative with fully realized characters and relationships. Each has a plot but the focus is on the people and on the complex web of decisions and relationships that constitutes each life. Much of the action takes place without dialogue. Kieslowski trusts his script, his actors, his cinematographers (a different one for each film), and he trusts his own skills as a director, allowing this collaboration of talents to convey the necessary information with subtlety and grace. Together they find the telling details, those crucial moments and actions that bring a character sharply into focus for the audience and make clear the conflicting emotions that cloud each moral dilemma.
Decalogue 1, for example, features a professor addressing his class from behind a vast lectern while his young son sits among the students. A point-of-view shot demonstrates the feelings of the son as he watches his dad from behind the framework of a projector, catching glimpses of his father as a sort of God-like being holding forth on the rules of the universe. Later, when the grieving father walks into a church and destroys an altar, Kieslowski does not overplay the visual parallel between the altar and the lectern, but rather keeps his camera focused on the man and his emotions. The juxtaposition is there for those who wish to see it and it adds a layer of meaning to the story, but Kieslowski does not belabor the point.
In Decalogue 2 a woman is shown destroying a house plant and breaking a drinking glass out of what seems like sheer perversity. Kieslowski does not explain her actions, but the suggestion seems to be that she is girding herself for the destructive act of having an abortion.
Decalogue 3 features a woman reestablishing contact with her former lover. They are both married and have recently ended their illicit affair, but she draws him out on a mad search for her phantom husband, visiting jail cells and empty subterranean parking garages in the middle of the night. The staging again suggests something deeper at work, as though the man is being forced to venture into the netherworld of his guilty conscience before declaring to his wife, in the closing shot, that he will not be venturing out at night anymore.
Decalogue 5 takes a darker turn with a story of murder and capital punishment. A young man senselessly attacks an older man and a young defense attorney is later assigned the case. Much of the film is shot in a dark sepia tone, while the perimeter of the frame is often shrouded in a murky haze, suggesting the nebulous morality of state-sanctioned execution and the vague boundaries that distinguish it from murder.
Another example of Kieslowki’s technique is in Decalogue 9, where a man learns of his infertility and returns home to break the news to his wife. As they ride together in an elevator, they are engulfed in darkness, with shafts of light briefly illuminating one and then the other. Kieslowski has subtly shown us the rift between them; they are individuals now, not a couple, alone in darkness and unified only by her hand reaching through the blackness to touch his face, to establish contact across the gulf that is widening between them.
It’s not all darkness and brooding however. Decalogue 10 concludes the series on a more humorous note, as two brothers are reunited by their estranged father’s death and find themselves becoming obsessed by his stamp collection. This film is not without its serious themes and moments of suspense and anxiety, but is leavened with a dark humor not seen in the previous pictures.
And all throughout these films run two more unifying threads, one conspicuous and one quite subtle. The first is the recurring appearance of a mysterious young man with a piercing gaze who observes the action but never takes part. He seems to play the role of a sort of mute Greek chorus, offering a silent commentary on the tragedy and absurdity of the dramas playing out before us. The other is the recurring sound of barking dogs, usually somewhere off in the distance and often at crucial moments—a lonely but portentous refrain, suggesting that damnation looms beyond each moral quandary.
There was a time when camera technique meant something, when acute angles or a shaky handheld camera signified something about character or plot. But the language of cinema has become diluted of late, with directors using every flourish and every gimmick imaginable, like a sort of pyrotechnic display: all flash and spectacle but with little substance. in contrast, Kieslowski subjugates his technique to the film, keeping the camera always at the service of the story.
Orson Welles once said that a movie should not reveal all its secrets in a single viewing. We view paintings more than once; we read stories and novels more than once; we listen to a piece of music over and over again throughout our lives. Why should movies not be the same way? Kieslowski seems to adhere to this maxim, creating small but dense portraits of people at crucial turning points in their lives. His films can be seen once and enjoyed, but a second and third viewing reveals the rich, textured layers of his creations, films that lay rooted in modern reality but speak eloquently and timelessly of universal truths.
The Decalogue (1988)
Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Written by Krzysztof Piesiewicz and Kieslowski.
Playing June 1-3 and repeated June 4-11 at at Pacific Film Archive. Discounted tickets for the entire series are available. 2626 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.
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