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The Decalogue
Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
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Pawel, a boy who appears to be younger than 10, is questioning his Catholic aunt about her faith. The boy's mother is dead, and his father is a rationalist who doesn't know how to answer Pawel's inquiries about anything that cannot be measured. When the aunt tells Pawel that she believes in God, Pawel wants her to describe him.

She gets up from her chair, pulls the boy to herself and holds him tight.

"What do you feel now?" she asks after a while.

"I love you," Pawel says.

"Exactly," the aunt says. "That's where he is."

This scene and others from the Polish series The Decalogue are more like poetry than like systematic theology. And, God knows, those of us who have him all charted out badly need a little poetry, a little wonder, a little mystery. All this can be found in Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Decalogue, ten films loosely related to the Ten Commandments and originally made for television. The movies show without having to tell. Legendary Polish director Kieslowski takes only a few words to render such complex ideas as God himself. At the same time, Decalogue's subtle depictions do not strip God, or his absolutes, of mystery.

After seeing the films, Stanley Kubrick praised Kieslowski and screenplay coauthor Krzysztof Piesiewicz for "the very rare ability to dramatize their ideas rather than just talk about them." Indeed, the screenwriters placed abstract absolutes into concrete, unpredictable, and yet realistic situations. They managed to transcribe the metaphysical into the tangible, without claiming that the end result is a complete picture. The well-developed metaphors and multilayered symbols penetrate to the core of a human soul.

For example, in Part One (You shall not have other gods besides me), a university professor (Krzysztof) introduces his son Pawel to a world in which everything can be calculated and predicted. It's winter and Pawel wants to try out his new skates. The two use a personal computer—quite explicitly symbolic of the god of reason that the father worships—to determine the thickness of the ice cover on a nearby pond. The machine gives Pawel its "blessing": the ice will hold up someone three times the boy's weight.

A sudden spilling of the ink on the professor's desk foreshadows the unexpected. Through a series of poignant symbols, a seemingly illogical event provokes a confrontation between the Christian God and Krzysztof's self-sufficiency.

Or take Part Three (Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day), which takes place on Christmas Eve. In Poland, it's a time for families to come together, put up a Christmas tree, exchange loving words and good wishes, share a traditional 12-course meal, unwrap the gifts, and attend a midnight Pasterka service at a nearby Catholic church. On the night when no one wants to be alone, an ex-lover uses a pretext to lure a family man out of his home. He tells his wife and children he'll be back soon. In this film, the definition of Sabbath includes the Holy Night.

Then there's the comedic Part Ten (You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor), in which two brothers unexpectedly inherit a rare stamp collection that turns out to be worth millions. But they refuse to sell it and obsess about a little stamp missing from the collection.

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February 5 2001, Vol. 45, No. 2