Even though Decalogue was made at the end of the rigid era of Polish communism, it is as if it were clear to Kieślowski that the long-awaited democratization of the East block would not solve the deep and intimate problems of mankind



In 1998 Krzysztof Kieślowski’s A Short Film About Killing, which was already proclaimed the best Polish and European film and won the Golden Palm, raised many questions when it arrived in film theatres. Was it possible that such a fiercely metaphysical, shockingly naturalistic and artistically impregnated film was produced by the national television of an East European country? Was it possible that there still existed a filmmaker who, in a time of callous irony, cynicism, relativity of values and the transformation of death into a humorous spectacle, seriously ponders questions of ethics and at the same time arranges a creepily attractive spectacle of double murder? Even though he had already had twenty years of film experience, many people asked who this “old-fashioned” Polish guy, who wanted to be unique even though everybody else refered heavily to the postmodernism, was. Soon it became obvious that A Short Film About Killing, which was actually the fifth episode of the TV series Decalogue (1987/88), and A Short Film About Love (Decalogue 6), was not an accidental hit but rather the product of a strong author with equal esthetic and ethic values. To conclude this one had to see, if not Kieślowski’s previous work from the 1970s, then at least the other episodes of Decalogue, inspired by the Ten Commandments. The other famous and equally important series of films includes the testamentary trilogy Three Colors: Blue (1993), White (1994) and Red (1994), which Kieślowski made after the fall of the Iron Curtain in France.


Even though Decalogue was made at the end of the rigid era of Polish communism, it is as if it were clear to Kieślowski, who did not fear to criticize the regime, that the long-awaited democratization of the East block would not solve the deep and intimate problems of mankind. They are the same and iterative everywhere -- or at least in the so-called Western civilization. Therefore, the director searched for the correction in universal values, which according to him, are primarily Christian values. The Ten Commandments are for Kieślowski (and sometimes vice versa) clear and unambiguous, which he demonstrates in the first episode by introducing the episodic character of a mysterious observer (God?) who will appear shortly in nine episodes, but the characters in Decalogue are all people of flesh and blood. They are weak, vulnerable, sinful and above all lonely. They live next to each other in skyscrapers but they see each other only in passing, on the staircase or in an elevator, which besides through the building itself draws a strong vertical in the series Decalogue as well. Just like the place of action is not merely a mechanical bond of different stories in Decalogue, similarly the skyscraper’s vertical is not merely physical and geometric; it is also a spiritual vertical. That is why somebody compared Kieślowski’s masterpiece with a Gothic cathedral that wants to reach the sky with its vertiginous towers and become closer to God.


Decalogue’s episodes were for Kieślowski and his “neighbors” a test of their consciousness as well as sort of a stylistic rehearsal: in each of the ten intimate stories he managed to ensure a different visual style (thanks to using a different cinematographer for each of the stories) and adjusted the screenplay to each of the commandments. This was a good preparation for the narrative and visual interpretation of principles of the French Revolution, written on the French flag. In the new “variations of destiny and coincidences”, the term that film critic Marek Haltof used to describe Kieślowski’s films, Kieślowski, with the help of his usual collaborators from Decalogue co-screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz and composer Zbigniew Preisner, once again releases his hypersensitive senses and virtuosic minimalism, while fusing Christian imperatives (faith, love and hope) and the colors of the French flag with principles of the French revolution. He colored “freedom” in Blue, “equality” in White, and “fraternity” in Red. In Three Colors Kieślowski connected Eastern and Western Europe with places of action (France-Poland-France), saved from intimate shipwreck those characters who accepted his moral principles, symbolically crossed out the vertical from Decalogue and finished his unique “way of the cross”. (Diana Nenadić)