100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #5: Dekalog (1989)

Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski. Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz.

Among the greatest achievements of cinema is the way Polish Director Krzysztof Kieslowski, known for his dramatic depictions of Polish life, captures what feels like the entire human experience in his ten-part masterpiece Dekalog. A director bound by the restrictions of a communist government, Kieslowski often had to fight censorship to depict what he believed to be the real experience of Poland, while letting his self-proclaimed “personal and private faith” guide his movies on a thematic level. Originally produced for television, the project was shot with cinematic ambitions, with two episodes later re-released as feature length films. Viewed in its entirety, the series is episodic, but moves as a singular work, capturing unique individuals with each new episode, but tying them together through one common thread: the Ten Commandments. Kieslowski draws on the experiences of everyday people living in Communist Poland to tell Dekalog’s unique stories, keeping them elusively tied to the biblical commandments, but ending each work with profound emotional epiphanies. It is no wonder that this was included in the Vatican’s 1995 compilation of important films.

While Kieslowski was raised in the Catholic faith, he remained mysterious when talking about matters of God and religion. The above mentioned ‘personal and private faith’ kept people in a state of uncertainty about where he stood, and with Dekalog, that uncertainty persists. The stories are not told as Sunday school lessons where every moral choice is clear. The characters are flawed, often deeply lost souls who find themselves at serious crossroads in their lives with little to no guidance (or an unwillingness to seek guidance). Yet before the films are written off as willfully unclear, there is more to understand about Kieslowski and his troubled relationship with governance. An artist who sought to show people as humans worthy of love and empathy, moral guidance was always on his mind, and his stance on politics was extremely pessimistic. “They do not help people,” he stated in an interview, and with Dekalog it was his intention to show the way that these ancient commandments can (and should) still act as a guide for people trying to navigate the complexity and sorrow of modern life, rather than a strict reliance on worldly governance. His co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz was a lawyer by trade, and was consulted by the director for his knowledge of ethics. Together, they present ethically ambiguous life situations but reveal the futility of trying to navigate these situations with a purely earthbound understanding of the world. A desire or need for transcendent guidance always comes in.

Consider the first film in the series, where an atheist professor and his Catholic ex-wife both try to provide guidance for their son. The father tells his son that everything can be measured, while the mother puts her faith in God. This logical man’s understanding of the world is slowly shattered when tragedy strikes. His previous measured knowledge of a situation proved to be untrue. How does this relate to the first commandment? It is never mentioned in the film, but it could be that this man placed logic and reason ahead of God, and in the face of the unthinkable, he can no longer rely on logic. A heartbreaking image occurs when the boy’s mother falls to her knees in prayer, holding onto her husband, who remains standing. Her act of faithful surrender depicts the humility of those with true faith, while his logical mind provides him no comfort in the face of sorrow. 

The second episode is much more vague and sets the tone for the elusive nature of the series. With this one, a character does not openly take God’s name in vain, so the connection to the commandment is blurred. In the story, a doctor swears to a woman that he knows with certainty her sick husband is going to die. The woman insists on knowing his fate with certainty, because she is pregnant with another man’s baby. If her husband dies, she will keep the baby, and if he lives, she will abort the child. The doctor does not want her to have an abortion, so he tells her he knows with certainty her husband will die. While the doctor played God, it was the woman who insisted he do so, by forcing the name of God upon a doctor who cannot carry that name. Is this story cautioning against placing the name of God where it does not belong, and asking others to act as God’s guiding voice when people don’t want to make difficult choices, or face the consequences of their actions? Just like the first film, the direct connection to the commandment is tenuous, but by asking audiences to associate the film with the commandment, it allows the viewer to see where these characters have gone wrong, and calls for a deeper, mature understanding of God’s divine law.

Over the course of each film, the commandments begin to overlap, even as each story stays focused on the titular commandment. Stories about keeping holy the sabbath day and honoring parents also could be interpreted as stories about not committing adultery or not bearing false witness. This overlap works to show how important each commandment is, and how breaking one leads to breaking another, and so forth. The complexity of life in Poland is always at the forefront of the story, and Kieslowski is careful to show the aspects of life that remain out of people’s control, evoking a deep empathy for their plights, without completely letting them off the hook. Could he be suggesting that by not following the commandments, living an already difficult life is made even more difficult? That by ignoring the divine, the material world becomes unbearable?

Over several of the episodes, one actor takes on several roles in the background. He first appears as a homeless man sitting outside the apartment complex where the stories take place. He later appears as various other people hovering behind the main characters, always on the sidelines. He is an observer, a character outside the main action of the plot. Who is he? Kieslowski did not have an answer, but when asked about the nameless watcher, said only that “He is not happy with us.” With that statement, the observing man could easily be interpreted as a watchful God, observing the actions of these characters, letting them make their questionable choices. Yet rather than never intervening, He places himself on earth, among His children, present in their lives even when they do not notice Him.

The mysterious watcher only enhances the ambiguity of these stories, and appropriately so. From Commandment one to Commandment Ten, Kieslowski remains true to his haunting, challenging vision of mankind, never providing clear storytelling evidence of his intentions, but allows the nature of God, present in the lives of his characters and his audience, to awaken people to truth, to understand the necessity of higher moral values in a broken world, and to offer hope amidst unthinkable sorrow. Tied together, the ten films can offer a summation of life much the way that God gave two great commandments to sum up the ten; “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Rarely has a film so thoroughly and artistically expressed a need for mankind to practice love of God and love of neighbor.