Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog
A deeper look at the Ten Commandments and how Kieslowski introduced the world to prestige television
In an amusing but intellectually vacuous scene from the mockumentary Religulous, comedian Bill Maher listens to an American politician defend the importance of the Bible based on its moral standards, like the ten commandments. Unimpressed, Maher asks the politician if he doesn’t think that people would have figured out things like “don’t kill” or “don’t steal” without supernatural aid. Cut to the politician’s baffled face, back to Maher’s triumphant smirk, and onto the next scene of dubious spiritual intelligence, dubious because the film, despite its periodic humor, pits the atheist Maher against a series of straw man arguments for not just Christianity, but religion in general.
For instance, in the scene I just mentioned, neither Maher nor the politician is aware of standard Catholic teaching that many moral truths can be discovered without the need of the Bible. The Ancient Greeks, in fact, discovered many, which is one reason why Aristotle’s profound Nicomachean Ethics influenced the profound Christian theology of Thomas Aquinas.
However, instead of admonishing Maher and the politician, I think it’s important to sympathize with them. Similar to those two gentlemen, most people are unaware of the deeper aspects of theology and philosophy. Instead, their opinions on religion are often ideas gleaned from uninformed friends and family or from popular culture.
Interestingly, I believe the Vatican is aware of this predicament, which is why it tries to promote aspects of popular culture that might have a positive influence on truth, beauty, and goodness. Take, for example, the Vatican’s list of forty-five important films. Published in 1995, the list is split into three categories: religion, art, and values (truth, beauty, goodness). In the category of values, the Vatican promotes a masterpiece of European cinema based on the ten commandments: Dekalog. And in contrast to the superficial musings of Religulous, Dekalog offers a rich and nuanced look at how the ten commandments impact people in the modern world.
Released in Poland in 1989 as a ten-part film series, Dekalog is, first of all, an engaging work of art. In fact, long before acclaimed television series such as The Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad, Dekalog introduced the world to quality television equal to the greatest cinema. The main setting of Dekalog is a 1980's housing project in Poland. Each of the ten episodes is an hour long and focuses on some of the people who live in the housing project, and each episode takes as its starting point the commandment related to that episode. For example, the first episode takes as its starting point the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” In lesser hands, the series could have been a pretentious disaster, but the director of each episode is Krzysztof Kieślowski, a director often ranked among the greatest directors in film history.
Kieslowski’s genius manifests throughout the series. For instance, he has the extraordinary gift of creating strong emotions in the viewer without resorting to cheap sentimentality. Take episode five, which is based on the commandment, “You shall not kill.” As viewers, we witness a drifter named Jacek brutally murder a taxicab driver, Waldemar. A lot of television shows would turn the viewer’s shock and dismay at the murder into a cathartic form of revenge via a dramatic court case where a beautiful lawyer helps convince a jury to execute the murderer. For Kieslowski, however, the court case is not important. He cuts past it, only showing us the guilty verdict pronouncement for Jacek, and over the course of the next thirty minutes of the episode, Kieslowski will help us to actually care for and understand how someone like Jacek might have murdered a person in the first place. We don’t approve of the murder, obviously, but Kieslowski helps us empathize with the murderer. Empathy is, in fact, a good word to help describe the magic of the series. As viewers we come to care deeply about these human characters trying to deal with the inevitable difficulties of life. Even though each episode has a different narrative and different main characters, Kieslowski does something special to reward studious viewers. We recognize characters from one episode appearing briefly in other episodes, which helps convey a sense of dignity to our shared humanity: everyone has a story worth telling if people take the time to listen and pay attention.
Another hallmark of the series is the provocative and beautiful imagery throughout, which is sorely needed in our world today where so many trite, vulgar, and disposable images wash over us through screens, phones, and tablets. For example, in episode one, a venerated icon of the black Madonna of Czestochowa, a frozen slab of holy water, and the glowing green light of a computer screen all haunt the memory long after the episode has concluded, in part because Kieslowskis’s camera pays attention to things with the curiosity and concern of the artist and in part because the imagery combines so well with the episode’s profound narrative.
On top of those qualities, Kieslowski’s masterpiece uses the ten commandments to help point the viewer in the direction of the proper existential questions we should be asking ourselves as we progress through life, which is why I believe the Vatican placed the series in the “values” category. What kinds of questions should we ask ourselves? What should we value in this life? Well, in the first episode, which is based on the first commandment’s injunction to have no other gods, we begin to find out.
The episode centers on a father, Krzysztof, and his twelve-year-old son, Pawel. Krzystof believes in reason above all else, which is what he is trying to share with his son through their love for the accurate calculations of their home computer. However, Pawel is also beginning to ask deeper questions about life’s meaning, prompted by a beloved dog he finds dead and by his beloved aunt who wants Pawel to begin catechism classes at the local Catholic church. Pawel asks both relatives good questions, and both adults provide humane and honest answers. This helps us to care deeply about all three characters and their wrestling with life’s ultimate meaning, all of which makes the devastating conclusion of the episode so haunting.
In episode five, which I have already discussed, the viewer is asked if capital punishment is necessary in our modern world. In episode six, my personal favorite, which is based on the commandment against adultery, a teenage boy nightly watches through a telescope a promiscuous woman who lives in a building across from him. She learns of his voyeurism, and the two meet, which leads to a beautifully told story that challenges the boy’s naively romantic notions of love. Even more impressive, the story challenges the woman’s notion, a common one in our world, that love is nothing more than physical pleasure.
So we begin to see that the stories point to the right questions. Here are some: Do we lose our humanity by combating violence with more violence? Is love nothing more than sex and biology? Are religious faith and scientific reason antagonistic enemies or complimentary friends?
These probing questions bring me to the brilliant episode ten, to the Catholic anthropologist Rene Girard, and back to the Bill Maher scene mentioned at the start of this essay.
In contrast to the previous nine episodes, episode ten is a comedy. It is based on the final commandment: “thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s goods.” Two brothers, one a middle class business type and the younger one a rebellious vocalist for a death metal band, attend their father’s funeral. Afterwards, while packing up their father’s apartment, the brothers discover that dad has collected millions of dollars worth of valuable stamps. What follows in the episode is a comedic but poignant look at how jealousy, rivalry, and envy can divide people so easily.
Kieslowski’s choice to make the episode a comedy is a brilliant stroke that reminds me of Rene Girard’s brilliant exegesis of the tenth commandment. In Reading the Bible with Rene Girard, Girard discusses how the ninth commandment mentions not coveting your neighbor’s wife while the tenth commandment mentions not coveting your neighbor’s goods in general.
Here is Girard’s brilliant analysis: “The word neighbor is repeated, thus you can see that whoever wrote the tenth commandment tried to enumerate the objects you shouldn’t desire, and then finally he realizes it makes no sense to enumerate the objects. It ends with whatever belongs to your neighbor. In other words, the neighbor is more important than the object because all objects of the neighbor are desirable because they belong to the neighbor” (109).
Girard’s point is that the final commandment is a summation of the human problem of sin in general. We desire from others because of our own sense of lack. We covet what others have with the false belief that acquisition will increase or transform our being. But desiring what others have leads to conflict, jealousy, envy, and violence. The object itself doesn’t matter. In episode ten of Dekalog, the object of desire is a collection of stamps, albeit a stamp collection worth a lot of money. However, both brothers think the acquisition of the stamps will transform their lives into something better, but instead their pursuit leads to conflict with others and between themselves. This same conflict plays out in our world everyday: if only I had a car like my neighbor’s Mercedez, I’d be happier. If I only had a spouse as attractive as my neighbor’s, I’d be happier. If only I had the kind of job my brother has, I’d be happier, etc. One can see how this type of coveting can lead to violence, conflict, rivalry, jealousy, and envy. It is so common that Kieslowski is able to see the tragic comedy in its universality.
Thinkers like Girard and Artists like Kieslowski can help rattle us out of spiritual ignorance. At the beginning of the essay, I mentioned a scene with Bill Maher and a politician. Both men reduce the ten commandments to simply a boring set of ethical rules. In their defense, I think if you asked most people why the ten commandments are important, you would get a lot of answers similar to Maher’s and the politician’s. Girard, however, is able to show us the deeper spiritual significance of the ten commandments. And Kieslowski does the same via his art.
If we were sitting in that room with Maher and the politician, perhaps we could use Girard’s and Kieslowski’s insights about the ten commandments to help the gentleman come to a deeper appreciation for them. Also, perhaps we could help both men see that Christianity is actually more than just a set of rules to adhere to. Instead, it is also about a person to follow.
In several episodes of Dekalog, a mysterious figure appears. He never speaks, and he appears briefly at key moments as different people: a homeless person, a university student, a man riding a bicycle, etc. With compassion and tenderness, he peacefully looks on at these people striving to make their lives better. The characters, however, look at the mysterious figure briefly before going back to their own pursuits of happiness. Kieslowski never stated that the mysterious figure was a Christ-like symbol, and Kieslowski himself seems to have had a complicated relationship with his Christian upbringing, but the figure certainly seems to symbolize the peace on offer to all the characters, characters whose hearts are restlessly striving for happiness.
But is true happiness or contentment possible for us modern people? Kieslowski’s series seems to point overall to that very important question. The answer? Well, as St. Augustine of Hippo famously said, “You have made us for yourself, oh Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
To see hearts transformed in peace, however, would perhaps require a view of some of the films listed in the Vatican’s “religious” category. Above all, it would require a proper understanding of The Gospel message itself, but that’s another essay.
