Left Field Cinema

Continuing on from the Left Field Cinema analysis of episodes one to five of this television masterpiece. This edition will examine the second half of the series that Stanley Kubrick once described as the only masterpiece he could name that was filmed in his lifetime. Kieslowski’s mini series bases each episode around one of the ten commandments, each episode is self contained with occasional brief crossovers and one reoccurring character, that of a young blonde haired man who seems to be present at key intervals or pivotal character moments.

Starting this edition with an examination of episode six: Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. Episode six was the second of the Dekalog episodes to be expanded into a feature film, this time entitled A Short Film About Love, which nicely contrasts with it’s counterpart A Short Film About Killing. Although inferior to A Short Film About Killing, it is a strong story and one which easily expands to the feature films eighty minute run time. The plot follows a young reclusive man played by Olaf Lubazenko who spends most of his evenings spying on a neighbour who lives in the building opposite him, he fantasises and masturbates as she brings home her various lovers. The young man falls in love with this woman played by Grazyna Szapolowska but she has no idea he even exists. Slowly his presence is revealed to her and events take a darker sinister turn as she decides to play with this adolescents turbulent emotions.

Perhaps the reason this episode was expanded and not one of the other stronger episodes is because it is the opposite subject of episode five, (a make-love-not-war message the films produce when played together). Or perhaps it is the highly sexualised nature of the episodes plotline, (a peeping Tom watching a woman having sex with her partners – a story likely to appeal to male audiences in particular). Or perhaps it is because of the complex relationship between the central characters. Perhaps more than any other episode of Dekalog, the central relationship is highly compelling, complex and full of dramatic reversals. For the first half the young man obsesses over the object of his desire – but after the central confrontation, the roles are reversed, the young man stops peeping on the woman and disappears from view. She craves his attention and worries about his health and so seeks him out and then becomes obsessed with him when he no longer has any interest in her. It is an engaging story, and one which benefits from its complex character dynamic.

Grazyna Szapolowska previously played the central character in Kieslowski’s 1985 feature film No End. Kieslowski and Szapolowska did not get on well with each other and their relationship during the No End production had been a turbulent one, despite this they still worked with each other for this project because they both respected the others talents.

Episode seven: Thou Shalt Not Steal. The story of a young woman played by Maja Barelkowska who kidnaps her child. The child has been raised by the young woman’s parents, because she was not old enough to do it herself when the child was born. The woman and child seek refuge with the child’s father (a formerly the young girls school teacher. Meanwhile the parents search high and low for their daughter and granddaughter. The plot of this episode is extremely simple, the action is minimal, and the characters a slightly underdeveloped, but the episode does have an interesting relationship to its commandment. The young woman is stealing her own child; can she steal what was hers to begin with? Or was the act of theft Kieslowski is referring to the theft of the child by grandparents made some years earlier, denying the young mother the chance to bring up her own offspring. The child is oblivious to what is going on around her, and does not respond when her mother asks her to call her “mama” the child continues to refer to her by her first name because the true nature of their relationship is beyond her comprehension. There is are interesting change in allegiances, as the father of the child takes the side of the grandparents, rejecting fatherhood and leaving the mother on her own. The grandmother and mothers relationship is also of interest, the grandmother admits that she was never close to her daughter, but she is to her adopted daughter. The grandfather is more neutral in the equation and tries to find more peaceful resolutions to the conflict.

Episode seven is not the strongest of Dekalog episodes, the story is underwritten and a large portion of the story is dedicated to the grandparents physically searching for the child to no avail, although the kidnapping sequence is well produced and nicely low key when compared to modern hyperactive child abduction sequences. As always simplicity is one of Kieslowski’s strongest weapons in his creative arsenal.

Onto episode eight: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Arguably the toughest of the commandments to convey in this mini-film format; it’s more complex than Thou shalt not kill, for example. Unsurprisingly this results in what I view as the weakest of the Dekalog series. The plot follows a Holocaust survivor played by Teresa Marczewska who visits an ethics professor played by Mari Koscialowska who’d refused to help her on the basis of this commandment. The problem with the episode is that there is no action to speak of; the story relies on rather large chunks of dry exposition, long scenes with two characters recounting events from over forty years previously. There is no conflict in the episode, there is a mystery but this mystery does not drive the story and thus is not interesting enough to maintain our attention. These extended duologues between the two women are too abstract, too directly philosophical; the episode lacks the previous conflict, character, or dilemma which make episodes one to seven so memorable and engaging. A large section of the episode is dedicated to an ethics class, wherein one of the students provides a scenario based on the story of episode two, the teacher points out that this scenario is based on truth and that it is a very small town. This scene only amplifies the failings of episode eight as it reminds us of the complexities of the central dilemma of episode two. Where episode two’s moral conundrum was played out before us in present tense, in episode eight the dilemma has come to pass over four decades ago, meaning there is very little in the way of momentum in the episode as the pivotal event has long since stagnated. A brief and ambiguous flashback to the days of the holocaust which begins the episode – comes to nothing. Had Kieslowski and company decided to add a non-linear dimension to the episode in the form of extended World War II flashbacks then the episode might have been saved, but alas it was not meant to be.

Episode nine: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife. Following a married couple, the surgeon played by Piotr Machalica has recently discovered that he is impotent and the wife played by Ewa Blaszczyk has taken another lover. The husband finds out about this lover and begins to lose his self confidence and the will to live. Further to the point I made in previously, it is easy to muddle the various commandments with their respective episodes and again it would be easy to mistake this for Thou Shalt not commit adultery. At this point the series quality improves after reaching its nadir in the previous episode. Episode nine, presents us with a very mature exploration of adultery in that the adulterer is not villianised, and the wronged party is not without his flaws. This episode presents a situation where no one intends to hurt anyone, but through natural human failings people are hurt and driven to the brink to destruction – this is a concentrated examination of human frailty and how even love can be contorted into something dreadful in the right circumstances. Kieslowski ratchets up the tension as a series of misunderstandings draw us closer to a fatal climax.

Episode nine has the best soundtrack of the entire series and it seems an appropriate time to mention the work of the great Zbigniew Preisner who composed unique scores for all of the Dekalog series, this is truly an extra bonus for a television series, rarely do they receive such a diverse score. Preisner gently changes his reoccurring themes as the series develops, depending on the tone of the episode. Episode nine features a subplot about a young patient of the doctor who wants to be a singer but can’t because of a heart condition she suffers (the inspiration for the first half of another Kieslowski project – The Double Life of Veronique) the presence of the singer leads to the incorporation of beautiful female vocals into the episodes score. Preisner and Kieslowski first collaborated on No End in 1985 and they continued to work with one and other through The Double Life of Veronique and The Three Colours Trilogy. Preisners gentle, sometimes powerful and often unique scores add so much to the majority of Kieslowski’s films, so much so that it’s difficult to disassociate the two men’s works.

Finally episode ten: The last of the Ten Commandments and the final episode in the series, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods. This story follows a pair of brothers played by Zbigniew Zamachowski and Jerzy Stuhr, they inherit a stamp collection and without realising they’re extremely valuable they give a rare series away. Once the worth of stamps becomes known to them they try to get them back and in doing so come into conflict with a shady stamp dealer, the stamps bring the brothers closer together as they agree not to sell them and preserve some of their father’s legacy. Unfortunately all the stamps are stolen under suspicious circumstances and the brothers begin to turn on each other.

Episode ten is unique in the breadth of Dekalog stories, where most of them adopt a “misery-loves-company” attitude towards both protagonists and narrative, episode ten instead opts for a more light-hearted approach to it’s subject and provides a pair of light-heartedly comical and contrasting brothers, one is a businessman, the other is a punk rocker, the fact that the two men actually convince as brothers is remarkable. They instantly endear themselves to us, and the very notion of a stamp-collecting criminal underworld is instantly humorous, with a few tweaks Kieslowski could have turned this into an absurdist comedy. Throw into the mix a scene stealing guard dog and we have the makings of Dekalog’s light-hearted hour, it is a relief that it comes at the end of nine hours pain, there is light at the end of the tunnel and you will leave the series with an unexpected smile on your face and a warm feeling in your heart.

Although the episode does change the direction of the series in a subtle fashion, it never feels out of place. The comedy is balanced by a serious edge in the same manner as Three Colours White which one can still maintain is the only film to be labled a comedy without one humorous moment in its entire run time. Episode ten does make an astute evaluation of the corrupting influence of possessions, the brothers do not sell the collection but they let it take over their lives, one sacrificing a kidney for a stamp, the other quitting his rock band to look after the collection instead of going on tour with his friends, they go from no interest in stamps to obsessives and the episode provides an interesting examination of how this transference of priorities can effect individuals in the most negative of ways.

To summarise this series is a difficult task. I would argue that Dekalog functions both as an entire series and on an episode by episode basis. You could take one episode of Dekalog randomly and watch it without ever needing to see another, for the most part, the stories are humanistic – centred around ethical and moral choices, the decisions which change lives, the situations which effect us deeply as human beings. Dekalog is more than a work of canonical analysis; it is a work of moral pondering: why do we make bad decisions, what forces us to make good decisions? As any self-assured atheist will admit, the bible is filled with morality tales which are of extreme value to children and enable morality within youthful minds without every effecting their religious views or beliefs – not exclusively Christian morality, but human morality in all its diverse forms. Dekalog has the same effect but the intended audience are adults, this is an advanced class in modern morality - religion has little to do with it. Perhaps only episode one of Dekalog (Thou shalt have no other gods before me) plays with a moral scenario which only Christian’s can gain spiritual rather than moral wisdom from. Even episode two (Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain) presents such a complex ethical dilemma (should any person choose whether another person lives or dies) that the religious overtones are crushed by the universally potent position the doctor faces in that episode. The moral is assimilated, the religion is not. It must also be reitterated that although morality is central to Dekalog, Kieslowski is far from didactic; the series focus is morality not moralising.

Briefly it is also worth mentioning the quality of the UK DVD releases for this series. Arteficial Eye hold the distribution rights in this country. They opted to do little in the way of restoritive work for the Dekalog, either as an editorial choice or because unique technical difficulties. The picture quality is of a similar level to that which would have originally been broadcast on Polish television some twenty years earlier, filled with 16mm based film defects, grain, dirt, scratches, rasterholes, burns, watermarks, frame-jumps etc. Often choosing not to clean up older film transfers can be refreshing and invokes as sense of period which is sometimes lost in the wake of countless numbers of speical editions and or digital remastering schemes, not that remastering is a negative activity, for the majority of films it is a delight to seem them cleaned up and defect free, but every now and then its nice to see a mucky film transfer just to remember what TV and film used to look like.

Dekalog may take its inspiration from the Ten Commandments and may base its episode structure around these ten biblical references, but the content is far from exclusively Christian. Together the episodes form Kieslowski’s most ambitious, audacious project, only the Three Colours Trilogy would challenge Dekalog’s status in this regard. Overall Dekalog is one of the finest mini-series ever produced.

M.Dawson