It has begun…
The Decalogue. Adventures in Polish film making. And if all ten are as good and as thought-provoking as the first, then we should be in for an adventure indeed.
By way of introduction, the Decalogue is a Polish made-for-TV miniseries that was made in the late 80’s. All ten films are centered on the tenants of a modern-day housing project, where the characters of each independent episode sometimes interact. The intent of each of the ten independent episodes is to examine, interpret, or otherwise contemplate each of the Ten Commandments.[1] Over the course of approximately the next ten weeks, I would like to review each of the ten episodes in kind.
The first episode is a clear and harmonious look at the first of the Commandments: Thou shall have no other gods before me. The story centers around a boy and his father. The boy is an incredibly inquisitive child, and also very intelligent. He shares his father’s love of computers and math equations, and the concreteness therein. The father, in his love of the mathematic esthetic, has ceased to have any concrete beliefs about God and the afterlife, and even betrays strong skepticism the existence of a soul.
The philosophy of the film is heavy from the get-go. We begin with a child’s questions about death and afterlife, and the father’s own agnostically-formulated answers. This is contrasted by the parallel relationship of the young boy with his aunt (his father’s sister), who believes in God. “God is…very simple, if you have faith,” she says.
The computer stands as a centrifugal force. Several times throughout the film, information is plugged into the dead, staring green and black monitor, then spits out its perfectly compiled information. The philosophy we are to understand behind this computer is espoused in a principle scene where the father, apparently something of a college professor, waxes eloquent on a modernistic, rationalistic understanding of language and mathematics, in which he posits, despite the many difficulties of language and culture, that there can be some kind of grand, mathematical, master language. In this way, he comes to view computers, machines, with the possibility of personality. This belief will have some disastrous consequences – which he probably could not prevent regardless.
The pinnacle scene for me came when the father stares into the dead face of his monitor. There is no information to plug in at this point to avoid the great disaster. No simple equation. Life has struck, and there is no mathematical language to give it meaning. As I watched, I could only think, “You gotta destroy that computer. That’s the only solution. Scorched earth policy, man. Tear down the idols.” And echoing in my mind was Isaiah 44, especially that great line: “All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame.”
The acting is fabulous and believable, especially the wide-eyed wonder and passion of our young boy[2] (I’m not going to even pretend to know these Polish people’s names). The directing impressive. Towards the beginning, there is shot of a tea cup that I really like. “The milk’s sour,” the boy says; yes, that and then some. As the first scene comes full circle with the last, we are left only to contemplate how little we know, how much we trust, and what certainty there really is.
I would consider it a pro-religious film, and at the least, not anti-religious. It is interesting to note that this was made and aired behind the Iron Curtain, during the Cold War. I don’t know if the director/writer ascribes to any Judeo-Christian or Judaistic tradition, or what influence that has had on his life. The father’s name in the first film is Krzysztof, as is the director’s and writer’s. I don’t know if this is autobiographical, the tumultuous journey of the modernist (maybe it’s just a really popular name). But I do know that twenty years later, he has still given us something very important to think about. Especially when we consider just what idols in which we regularly put our faith.
5/5
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