Spoiler Warning: - The ending of some of the decalogues may be revealed to ensure fluency of thought.
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The Plot
- Decalogue 1 – Decalogue 1 is the tragic story of a boy and his father who use their computer to predict the thickness of the ice on the lake. Before I looked up the Commandment, I wondered whether Kieslowski was alluding to the cruelty of faith, frailty of Gods as in the Greek epics etc.
# Commandment 1 - I am The Lord your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.
Or is it,
# Commandment 2 - You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I The Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
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- Decalogue 2 – Decalogue 2 is the story of a pregnant woman who begs the doctor who is treating her husband to tell her whether he will live or die. Her ethical dilemma is clear – she bears the child of another man. If the husband will live, she must have an abortion. If the husband will not, she should not.
# Commandment 3 - You shall not take The Name of The Lord your God in vain; for The Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His Name in vain.
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- Decalogue 3 – Decalogue 3 is about the cab driver who leaves his home, wife and children on a Christmas night to help his lover. It has nothing to do with the Sabbath directly. The adultery also runs parallel to it.
# Commandment 4 - Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to The Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days The Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
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- Decalogue 4 – Decalogue 4 is about a teenage daughter and her relationship with her father. She stumbles upon a letter meant to be read by her after the mother’s death and the effect on her.
# Commandment 5 - Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which The Lord your God gives you.
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- Decalogue 5 – Decalogue 5 is Kieslowski’s statement on killing – first the murder by the protagonist and second, the capital punishment by the State seen through the eyes of the murderer’s lawyer.
# Commandment 6 - You shall not kill
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- Decalogue 6 – Decalogue 6 reminded me of the theme of “Ek Choti Si Love Story” dealt in a more delicate manner. It is about a peeping tom who is enamored by his neighbor. You could also say that this is about love. The teenager’s love for the neighbor was unselfish, despite his actions.
Here my knowledge of the Commandments fails me. There are a lot of them delicately interwoven into it.
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- Decalogue 7 – Decalogue 7 is about a mother who kidnaps her daughter from the grandmother who raised the child. The ending keeps you at the edge of your seat – will the child go with the mother or the grandmother?
# Commandment 8 - You shall not steal.
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- Decalogue 8 – Decalogue 8 is about an Ethics Professor and an American who wrote a thesis on her. The American sits in her class and brings up in a discussion on ethics the story of a little Jewish girl who was turned away from rescue during the Nazi days. The Lady Professor reacts as if her old sins have come home to roost. Kieslowski takes us into a very logical ending with an explanation of the ethics through the characters. Incidentally, one of the students brings up the story of Decalogue 2 into the ethics class for discussion.
# Commandment 9 - You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
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- Decalogue 9 – Decalogue 9 dwells on adultery. The husband comes across the wife’s adultery. There is a lot of twists, turns and drama right from the beginning.
# Commandment 7 - You shall not commit adultery.
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- Decalogue 10 – Decalogue 10 is about two estranged brothers coming together after their father’s death, stumbling upon his priceless stamp collection that he had amassed over the years.
# Commandment 10 - You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.
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The Director, the actors:-
Krzysztof Kieslowski is proving to be a master at juggling the ethical dilemmas of the day to day life. Decalogue 2, for instance, will give an indication of the adeptness and how he breaks the dilemma. It is very difficult to pin down the Commandment to a particular Decalogue. Each moral context with its effect on human life touches upon multiple Commandments.
Most of the decalogues may seem to be about a morally decadent society. However, they really are about hope – Kieslowski’s hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Ending of Decalogue 9 is a pointer.
The actors and actresses in the different plot are different. However, Artur Barcis is a recurring character in many of the decalogues. He is the young man who appears just before some major event in the plot – be it the tramp by the lake side in Decalogue 1; the cyclist in Decalogue 9; the student in Decalogue 8 etc. In the context of the commandments, he seems to be like Jesus.
Most of the protagonists of the Decalogue live in a high-rise apartment complex in Warsaw. We see some of them reappear in the other decalogues in the background– in the elevator, for instance.
There is a distinctive style to the whole series. There is a conscious attempt to not make them monotonous, unlike, say a season of “Friends” which is set among the same group of people. The effort in this direction can also be seen in the fact that nine different cinematographers were used for each of the different Decalogues, which brings a lot of creative versatility into the whole series.
In Kieslowski’s own terms, the series is not an attempt to moralise. In his own unassuming ways, he assures the viewers that there is no agenda or intention of propaganda in his filmmaking. His intention is only to make conversation with the viewers about something in life that came to his notice.
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