Decalogue I and V


Kieslowski's Decalogue captures the experience of Midrash as the viewers struggle to find the meaning of the film and associate it with the Ten Commandments.  However, in the films that we saw in class, I was able to make personal connection with the characters and the theme which helped me develop a significant meaning behind it. Kieslowski does not portray these Commandments by drilling the meaning into us through obvious representation. Instead I found that through Decalogue I and V,  he displayed the meaning through emotion and sometimes exaggerated situations that we all understand. In the background, we saw that Midrash is defined to "minimize the literal meaning of the text and force the reader to struggle with the meaning, to make the meaning personal." This is strongly true of the film, except Midrash is shown visually rather than in written texts. 

 In Decalogue I, I struggled to find meaning through the first half until Pavel had first gone missing. This seemed to jolt my mind to remember specific cases in previous scenes while keeping me nervously engaged on whether he had fallen through the lake or not. The themes that opened up to me after this were the differences in Tavel's aunt and father in their views on religion and his curiosity on the matter of death. Tavel's father was a computer professor and has purely scientific views on death and the afterlife. This is seen at the beginning of the film when Tavel asks about the meaning of death where he responds "It is when the heart stops pumping" and when he explains the idea of a soul is nonexistent. This contrasts to his aunt where she is strongly Catholic and how she wants him to attend church classes. This spoke volumes to me later when we find out that Tavel had fallen through the ice and died. Although devastating, Kieslowski captured emotion and personal experience to illustrate the meaning of the First Commandment ;"thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart". Tavel's father mistakenly did not believe in God and focused his beliefs on technology to dictate his life which in the end cost him to life of his son after the computer miscalculated the data on the ice. For symbols in the film, I saw the death of the dog foreshadowing a death later in the film and the man over the lake possibly being a supernatural God or the Devil. 

 In Decalogue V, it was again difficult for me to decipher the emotional aspect and purpose until Jacek admits to his attorney his true feelings about his past away sister and his life after that. This changes my understanding to a feeling of sympathy towards the character even after his numerous crimes. I was also able to recognize that the Jacek and the executioners and individuals apart of the hanging were not all that different from him. In the end, I am able to see the meaning clearly after again an emotional engagement that according to the Fifth Amendment, "Thou shall not kill". Kieslowski brings religious components into these films through passion and develops interaction among the audience as his meaning is not explicitly clear through the films. This in turn facilitates personal comprehension. 

 Do you think the executioners feel a sense of hypocrisy for killing a murderer? Since in Poland, the majority is Catholic, do you think they are not following the Commandments of God and feel a sense of unfairness out of completing the same task as the convicted?


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