Dekalog: Parts 6-10 [DVD]

I will make no pretence of neutrality in reviewing these films; I believe the Decalogue to be the greatest work of art, in any medium, of the last twenty-five years. Moreover it deserves its place alongside the very greatest works of the whole western canon.

In a remarkable achievement Kieslowski and his scriptwriter Piesiewicz, succeed in taking a somewhat hackneyed idea and drawing from it something compelling, fresh and above all humane. In taking the Ten Commandments as a starting point for ten films, they could easily have delivered a pious or sentimental homily on the place of those imperatives in modern society. Instead they turn an unflinching eye on the inhabitants of a vast grey housing estate in Communist Poland, revealing both the petty motivations and the small moments of redemption in their lives. The role of the commandments in each film is often oblique and ironic, yet undeniably pertinent. Characters are pushed to the brink, not in grandiose moral fables, but in deeply felt and often sad little tales. Even the subject of a brutal murder is delivered without judgement, allowing us to see both the squalid nature of murder and the equally squalid response of the state apparatus. There are no comforting answers, no beautiful effects and cathartic endings such as he offered in his later (and more famous) “Three Colours Trilogy”; instead he offers us a truly humane vision, which neither judges nor excuses the meanness and perversity at the centre of his characters’ lives. Given the extreme nature of Communist Poland one might expect the films to be too deeply enmeshed in that country’s problems to speak to a western audience. To their credit the films do not deny the effect of local conditions, yet are not limited by a parochial vision. As with most great art, its specificity gives it an authenticity that allows it to speak way beyond the limits of its own time and place.

Kieslowski employed different cinematographers for the different episodes, giving each film a distinct character without destroying the unity of the whole project. What makes these works all the more remarkable is that they were originally made for television under the harsh rule of Communist Poland. One wonders that such work could be made by a state enterprise and be shown on state television. But then it is equally hard to imagine films of this type being made for British television in the current climate of a commercially driven industry happy to deliver unremitting pap to uncritical audiences.

Two of the ten episodes received Cinema release in slightly longer versions under the titles “A short Film About Love” and “A short Film About Killing”. There are sufficient differences between the TV and Cinema versions for separate DVD releases of the two films to be desirable.

Kieslowski was a very great artist and “The Decalogue” will come to be seen as his masterpiece. Buy it before it disappears from the catalogue.

"Dekalog" consists of ten ,one-hour long films ,each based loosely on one of the Ten Commandments. Each film is set in a stereotypical drab ,high-rise housing estate in Warsaw ,during Communist rule in the 1980's. It would be flippant ,and a gross over-simplification, to say that "Dekalog" is like a cross between "Play for Today" and "EastEnders", but Kieslowski's ten films do have certain similarities in format to these two programmes. The estate is like a huge, high-rise Albert Square and each film is like a well-constructed play ; each one dealing with different types of social, personal and emotional issues and all containing impressive and intense acting performances by the cast. The character portraits that Kieslowski draws in each episode of the "Dekalog" are exquisite. The ten films are for the most part earnest and grim , without much light relief for the viewer. They are ,most certainly,not a barrel of laughs . All of the films deal with events that put a strain on loving personal relationships ; mostly between parent and child and husband and wife. Other common themes featured in the ten films are those of loneliness, alienation, regret and despair. Also, in nearly all of the films , a taciturn young man (Artur Barcis) appears .He neither utters any words nor interacts with any of the characters. He appears whenever the main character in each film faces a serious moral dilemma or personal trial. Is he God , an angel or a demon ? Can he even be seen by the other characters in the film ? Each film is slow paced and filmed superbly by Kieslowski ; many beautiful images are portrayed and he captures the vast range of emotions of his characters perfectly. We also get a vivid picture of life under Communism; a drab, uniform landscape where doctors, counter- assistants, IT workers, university lecturers and taxi drivers all live in the same utilitarian high rise estate. However beneath this deceptive ,surface greyness are a myriad of individual lives and relationships filled with love, regret and despair, which mirror those found all over the world and are common to the human experience. Kieslowski binds all of these themes together with religion and the Ten Commandments in particular. He shows in his films how the Mosaic Law is relevant to today's very different world and what the consequences are of ignoring these instructions. "Dekalog" is split into two discs , "1-5" and "6-10." The highlight of "6-10" is "Dekalog 6" about a young peeping tom , who gets more than he bargained for when he turns fantasy into reality. "Dekalog 9" was also a favourite of mine, as an impotent surgeon tries to keep his marriage together. "Dekalog 10" is the most light-hearted of the films , as two ,very different, brothers discover a shared interest in philately. If I was to make one criticism of the films, apart from their unremitting seriousness, it would be about the English subtitles. The quality of the English translation in my DVD wasn't the greatest and sometimes they didn't stay on the screen long enough for me to read them properly.

These ten films are the greatest achievement of European film making in the last twenty years. Shot with a visual economy and brutality of style which grew out of Kieslowski's work in documentary, they are at once profoundly wise and unflinchingly honest. Each individual film is a self-contained masterpiece, almost aphorisitic in their brevity and understated rhetoric. All the works concern various individual and overlapping lives on a vast Polish housing estate, and are filmed in colour which seems to have been drained of all but the most sombre hues. The theme of each film is drawn loosely from the ten comandments and explores what those imperatives might mean in a modern context. There is a profound sense of locality, with the films growing out of specifically Polish experience, yet never seeming parochial. Seen through Kieslowski's lense that vast housing complex really does become an entire world. The most famous of the series are those which gained independent release as "A short film about Killing" and "A short film about Love", but make no mistake, the quality of all the works is uniformly high.

Anyone who has come to know Kieslowski's work through later films such as "The Double Life of Veronique" or the "Three Colours Trilogy", might be surprised by the absences of beautiful effects and flights of poetic fancy. These are not films which offer the comforts or almost mystical catharsis of his last works. Instead they turn an unflinching gaze on some ordinary lives, focussing on the meanness, solitude and quiet desperation of ordinary people, but by doing so they ultimately offer moments of redemption and humanity which put them into the same rank as the later portraits of Rembrandt. These are films to return to again and again. If you let them they will get under your skin and allow you to see the world with a "Kieslowskian eye", not necessarily a seductive or beautiful vision, but one which has a richenss beyond virtually any western art (not simply cinema)of the last twenty to thirty years. In the long run it is with these films that the greatness of the director will come to be understood, rather than on the more self-conscious works which gained him a wider audience in the west.

Essential if you want to understand the state of humanity in late twentieth century Europe