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 "The Decalogue" Dekalog, jeden (1989)"Dekalog" Dekalog, jeden (original title)


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25 out of 25 people found the following review useful:
Incomprehensibly Heartbreaking, 15 September 2005
10/10
Author: Zach Saltz from Eugene, Oregon

What this movie manages to do for the viewer in a mere 53 minutes even the most powerful three hour epic cannot accomplish. Simply said, the polarized emotions yielded by this masterpiece puts "Million Dollar Baby" and "Schindler's List" to shame. It has the ability to change lives.

Words escape me that describe the power of the film. I consider "The Decalogue" the greatest cinematic achievement of all time, and this, its first episode, is also its best. It's one of the only surefire ways of making me cry, and occasionally tears will swell up just thinking about it.

The story seems conspicuously simple. The main characters are a middle-aged professor at a Warsaw university and his extremely intelligent son, about 10 years old. We see them in their everyday lives: Showing off their high-tech computer system, playing a game of chess, saying goodnight to each other, etc. Everything is profoundly normal the first half of the film - so ordinary that we cannot see the tragic event that is to soon unfold.

That being said, the last 10 minutes of this film are unlike anything that has ever been committed to celluloid. There are images that will stick in your mind forever - one involving burning wax flowing on to a picture, another involving a blue television screen. The story is so simple and the film seems so short - and yet, like a beautiful short story, gives us everything and nothing more.

"The Decaloge: Episode One" is captivating, exhilarating and profound. It's unforgettable. It's heartbreaking, yes, but also redemptive. The other episodes of "The Decalogue" are also mesmerizing - especially 4,5,6 and 7 - but none of them - indeed, nothing in the history of film - compares to the subtle magnificence of this first episode. Run, don't walk, to the video store. 10/10

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13 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Amazing..., 2 February 2003
10/10
Author: dorks_attack

I've seen parts one, seven, and eight. Of the three Part One is definitely the most moving. Somehow it just seemed so realistic. It really drove the point of human logic being fallible. In fact, I was so absorbed in the movie that immediately after watching it I almost felt like I had been the one involved in the spiritual crisis.

I really appreciate how Kieslowski managed to convey the essence of the first commandment (Thou shalt have no other God before me) without being preachy. In fact, religion hardly came into play at all. This gave the film a more universal appeal, by expressing themes that are relevant to those outside of the Christian religion.

The cinematography is impressive, especially this one scene where an ink blot appears from nowhere on the main character's work. It really sets the stage for the ending.

Of all Kieslowski's works that I have seen so far, this is easily the one I appreciate the most.

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10 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
A great start to an amazing series, 16 September 2002
Author: Look Closer from Ottawa, Ontario

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

While it's not my favourite OR least favourite of the series episode one is definitely a good measuring stick for those who are trying to decide whether or not to spend another 9 hours of their lives watching Kieslowski's masterpiece. Most of the elements that make this series brilliant and sometimes frustrating are laid out in this first powerful episode.

One thing that really made this episode great for me were the conscious directorial choices of Kieslowski. While few people would dispute Kieslowski's merits as an actor's director, he's never given much credit for his so called 'minimal' direction in terms of camera work or editing. (SPOILERS AHEAD) Consider the scene where the the boy is being fished out of the lake, how Kieslowski's camera not only lingers for much of the entire process making it all the more painful. But all the while the camera remains among the spectators far away straining to get a good look emulating the perspective of the father. Kieslowski's choice to have the father be unworried rather than hysterical after he's first told his son has fallen through the ice in itself reveals so much about his character's confidence in his calculations and technology than any speech could have. While the choice to focus on and shoot the father's lecture from the viewpoint of the son give's the viewer a sense of the son's pride and wonder at his father.

Decalogue One could most likely function as a silent film as most of its best parts are already without dialogue (such as the scene following the tragedy where the father is left staring at his computer screen). I say this not to discount the immense contribution of the Krzysztofs' dialogue but to herald Kieslowski's deft direction. After all, it is Decalogue's haunting images that stay with us long after we've seen it and lift this series high above most other films.

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10 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
A modern parable, 6 March 1999
10/10
Author: Bruce Thompson from Santa Fe, NM

"I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods but me." One of the world's great humanist filmmakers, Kieslowski gives us a story of a rationalist father, a spiritualist aunt, and a boy trying to come to terms with their conflicting views of the world. The boy's father, a college professor, allows his son to go ice skating after proving to himself through physics that the ice is safe. Through Kieslowski's eyes, this seemingly small, simple plot affords a vehicle for metaphysical questioning and psychological exploration on a grand scale.

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8 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Thin ice, 30 October 2006
10/10
Author: jotix100 from New York

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The first episode of Krzsztof Kieslowski sets the tone for the nine episodes that follow. Based loosely on the theme of the Ten Commandments, the director, and his collaborator, Krzsztof Piesiewicz, expanded on the idea of "I am the Lord, thy God, thou shalt not have any other God but me", the first commandment of the ten.

The premise is simple enough, yet there are so many things Kieslowski touches upon, that even a longer version of the commandment wouldn't come across as clear as the director presents it to his audience. We meet the young, sweet Pawel, whose father works at a university as a professor. Pawel comes home to ask his dad about subjects that coming from the mouth of such a young boy, make his father unsure about what to answer, even from a learned man like himself.

Pawel and his father love their computers in which the father creates mathematic problems for the young boy to solve. They are also into playing chess. We watch as the father beats a woman who must be some sort of champion and has not lost until she plays the father. When Pawel discovers the hidden ice skates meant for him to have for Christmas, he asks his father's permission to go to the nearby lake. The father having checked his computer, and based on the numbers he got back, allows the boy to go skating but not to go too far out.

Kieslowski makes Pawel question his father in all matters of life and death. The father gives his son answers from the way he perceives life around him; after all, he is a man whose knowledge is based on science. The father's faith is questioned after the tragedy that involves Pawel and makes him look inside himself to make sense of the way things happened. Kieslowski makes clear that the world of science and the world of religion, while not mixing at all, clash because Krzsztof, the agnostic professor has no use for a higher, and unknown power.

The three actors who appear in this segment are nothing short of perfection. Henryk Baranowski is the father. The excellent Maja Komorowska, plays Irina, the aunt, and the sweet Wojciech Klala is seen as Pawel.

Kiewslowski, one of the most humanistic directors from Poland, clearly demonstrates why he was one of the best. His untimely death came much too early. He is sadly missed.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
The fallacy of human life. This comment may contain spoilers, 11 March 2005
9/10
Author: Aquilant from Italy

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I beg to call your kind attention to the first sequences: glacial reflexes of light over the lake slightly lapped by the reddish bonfire by the shore where the mysterious man, living symbol of the commandment, is sitting impassibly; a television screen on the other side of the shop-window showing us the thoughtless image of a boy running towards the camera. Details, metaphors, clues supplied by Kieslowski in order to test our attention, to help us to understand the subtle, implicit meaning of the whole story, intended to create a definite rhythm by means of their logical way of linking together. And then the striking contrast between the vitality of the pigeons fed by the boy and the scent of death all around the dog left to rot into the snow, prelude to an unquiet duologue between father and son, full of apparently disarming banality. "What's the matter of feeding the pigeons if then a poor dog is left to freeze to death?" asks the boy "and why the people die? What's the meaning of death?" "The heart stops to pump blood; no blood goes to the brain and everything stops." answers the omniscient father, "Only the memories of our actions are left." "And what's the soul?" the boy goes on. "The soul doesn't exist. Men believe in the existence of the soul only to live better!" answers the father sharply. Life is a gift, he says, "life" means an open attitude towards our fellowmen, that's all. But this gift may be taken away from one moment to another: how many times our existence gives us broken promises and wrong certitudes? Very often, according to Kieslowski. Therefore our trusting in the foresight of a cold, deified computer could prove harmful if the fate takes delight to play unkind tricks on us, inserting an unexpected variant to the weather forecast not foreseen by human mental apparatus. Kieslowski pries into the individual uncertainties, into the frailty of the common man caught unawares, deprived of all his certainties, bereaved of his misleading, trans-codified dialectics, betrayed by a cold device absolutely unable to calculate the intrinsic value of our soul, forewarned by many disquieting omens: a bottle of ink mysteriously broken that wraps many pages of documents in a discomforting blue, an alarming ring of the bell, the firemen's siren going full blast, a phone call full of uncertainties, people running upstairs excitedly, a teacher down with the flu, an old man in the elevator with an hostile attitude, the "milicja's" car running towards the lake and then, sharp as a stab in the stomach, the final corroboration, as a proof of the disarming unpredictability of the reality. After all, the Dekalog series describe the unfruitful dialectics about the conflict between the will of understanding the world and the impossibility of understanding it; this story in particular may led us to reflect upon the transiency of human life and the fallacy of human talent. But disillusions though painful may bring us to the truth and a misleading look at the machinery of our existence can bring the people ceding control to a machine to a useless rebellion against the Divinity (symbolized here by the Picture of the Madonna of Jazna Gora with tears in her eyes).

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6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
"I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other God but me.", 17 May 2007
10/10
Author: ackstasis from Australia

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's ten-part miniseries, 'Dekalog,' is widely considered to be one of the one of the most stunning pieces of film-making in recent decades, or, indeed, of all time. Each of the one-hour-long films represents one of the Ten Commandments and explores possible meanings of the commandment, within a fictional story set in modern Poland. Despite being a staunch atheist myself, outstanding film-making is not something that I'm inclined to overlook, and so I sought out the 'Dekalog.' Searching high and low for the opportunity to acquire these films for myself, it was some months before I finally got my hands on them. At the time of writing this review, I have only watched the first one-hour film in the series, "Dekalog, jeden" and it goes without saying that I am already monumentally impressed.

Pawel (Wojciech Klata) is a curious and extremely intelligent young boy, filled with questions of life, its meanings and of death. He is raised by his kind and loving father, Krzysztof (Henryk Baranowski), a university professor with a staunch belief in the rationality of mathematics and logic. However, Pawel's auntie, Irena (Maja Komorowska), is concerned that Pawel is receiving inadequate spiritual education, and so requests that he be allowed to attend religious classes if he wished to. Krzystof, despite being an agnostic, is enthusiastic about this, though it's obvious that his own complete dependence upon computers, numbers, calculations and absolute conclusions has influenced his impressionable young son.

In the absolute heartbreaking final sequences, Krzysztof is ultimately faced with the unpredictability of fate. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Considering that Kieslowski had less than fifty minutes to build up to the ending, it is truly remarkable how much emotion he able to generate, keeping the tragic outcome an ominous but uncertain possibility for quite a long time, before our worst fears are eventually confirmed. In less than one hour, the episode has developed more emotional intensity than 95% of the feature-length films that you will see. Though he co-wrote (with Krzysztof Piesiewicz) and directed each episode himself, Kieslowski decided to choose different cinematographers for most of the films; for this one, it is Wieslaw Zdort, who does an incredible job of capturing the emotion of each moment, often using extreme close-ups to powerful effect. The acting is pretty much perfect, and I was particularly impressed with young Wojciech Klata, who delivered a phenomenal performance considering his age.

Also, it must be asked, who is the voiceless man in the sheepskin (Artur Barcis), an unspoken presence throughout the story, perched silently in front of a campfire amidst Poland's bitter winter cold? If what I have read is anything to go by, I have not seen the last of this solemn young character.

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9 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Exploring mourning, 12 June 2001
9/10
Author: mmarini from Milan, Italy

Like in a Kafka book, a character is cool and rational, but suddenly sees everything around falling down. He painfully sees that the mystery of evil can't be explained by the faith in God or by the bare cause-effect paradigm. Mourning is indeed more painful, if you can't explain why an accident happens, and the movie is about this (or, my interpretation). Despite something ingenuity about computers and despite the low budget, the movie is tremendous and wonderful.

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7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Less is More, 15 October 2003
Author: armagnac23 from san francisco

I find the Dekalog series to be brilliant. The first episode is one of the most memorable for me, and the most sad. The sense of loss is realistically conveyed, and brought tears to my eyes. It was an amazing intro to a wonderful series.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
The representation of ink blots as a painful forewarning, 19 March 2008
Author: Graham Greene from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I'm currently embarking on a personal viewing odyssey; to watch an episode from the Dekalog each night, and then comment on them the next morning. This means that the comments will be directed exclusively to the episode in question, with no possibility of discovering the foreshadowing of later events until I look back on the entire series at the end of its run and make my final evaluation. Last night I watched the first episode of the series and already I'm fascinated by the director's bold grasp of narrative unfolding.

The film opens with a few random scenes or perhaps, scenes that first appear to be random, but in fact, have a greater significance overall. Firstly, a possibly homeless man sits by a frozen lake with his back to the camera. Around him the dingy flat-blocks sprout from the landscape and surround him like imposing tombs of grey concrete. The colour scheme here is almost monochromatic, until we cut to a scene of a mournful man, sat in quiet contemplation. Something has happened, but we don't know what, as yet. We then cut to a nocturnal street scene. A similarly melancholic soul wanders aimlessly, stopping by a window and glancing at the television beyond, which shows the flickering, black and white, slow-motion images of smiling children running headlong towards the camera. The woman cries and the story begins.

I've been a great admirer of Kieslowski for a number of years, citing films like Blind Chance, The Double Life of Veronique, A Short Film about Killing and the Three Colours Trilogy as some of the most important, life-altering works of cinema this side of Tarkovsky. Blind Chance was his previous film before starting the Dekalog and was a film that looked specifically at the notions of predetermined fate and prediction. Here, we see that notion continued, with Kieslowski and Piesiewicz showing the effect of fate in relation to the notion of personal faith, or lack thereof. The focus of the film is a middle-aged, divorced professor and his young son; a similar mathematical protégé. The pair delight in developing equations, safe in the knowledge that everything in life can be discovered and evaluated through the process of numerical thought. However, when the young boy discovers the body of a local dog frozen in the snow, he questions his father's belief system in relation to that of his aunt, a devout Catholic, and finds that, in the eyes of his father, death is the end; there is no heaven and we all have no soul.

As the film moves towards its climax, the narrative becomes centred on the father's predictions and his son's obsession with taking his new ice-skates out onto the lake (still watched by the same, pensive homeless man; who I'd imagine will return in a later episode). The mood becomes more ominous, with the director juggling both the social and dramatic consequences of the script with something more divine and other-worldly. The dead dog acts as a forewarning to later events, as does the discussion of the soul; though Kieslowski's greatest artistic touch is with the slowly emerging ink blot permeating through the father's notes and statistical equations. This is the slow realisation of something greater at work and a great emotional signifier to the suffocating outcome of the plot.

As the film comes to a close, Kieslowski replays the scenes from the opening of the film and we suddenly realise where they came from. From this, Dekalog One is without question one of Kieslowski's greatest works; a towering creative achievement that reveals itself to the viewer slowly and ends in a way that leaves the viewer desperate to go back and experience it again.

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