I watched episodes 4 and 5 of Kieslowski's The Decalogue last night. I'm finding the only approach for me to take in watching The Decalogue is to savor one episode, think on it for several days and watch another. It's the same approach I'm taking with reading the Cassavetes on Cassavetes book. Although the book is several hundred pages long, I can only read a few pages at a time or I start to feel I'm missing too much. I'm Charlie with his one Wonka bar.
I sat in a living room full of friends (9 in all) and when episode 5 ended we could do nothing but sit in silence for several minutes. What is strange is that all of us in that room are not well acquainted with each other–usually adding pain to an awkward silence–and still none of us said anything. Usually I'm busy trying to make myself sound intelligent or my mind is going in a thousand different directions, but there just weren't words last night.
It is said that the 10 episodes of The Decalogue are each an examination of one of the Ten Commandments. But they are by no means morality tales. In fact they are full of ambiguity.
I saw this a little fundraising game once next to the cash register on the counter of a McDonald's. The game consisted of a large jar filled with water. Submerged in the water were these little platforms. The object was to drop a quarter into the jar and, if it lands on a platform, then I'd get a free milkshake or something. So I aimed and dropped the quarter. It hit the water and careened away from the platforms, settling on top of a pile of once hopeful quarters in the bottom of the jar. I see Kieslowski take each commandment as a quarter. He then drops it into the jar of the world we live in. Where it lands is as hard to predict as the direction my quarter took when I dropped it into the jar.
I would venture to say that Episode 5 deals with the "Thou shalt not murder" commandment. I have watched thousands of people die on screen in my lifetime. Never have I wanted somebody to not die as much as I did watching Episode 5 last night. None of the characters were particularly "good." But something intangible occurred. I think we all felt how purely against nature it is for a man to murder another man. I think we were speechless because sometimes we connect with people–even if they only exist in a film–in a way that goes beyond words. Beyond our words was a reverence that comes when seeing something so true, so clearly for the first time.






