Reviews & Ratings for
"The Decalogue" Dekalog, osiem (1990)"Dekalog" Dekalog, osiem (original title)

10 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Simple and Terrific, 11 March 2000

Author: sfuss from New York, NY

With a minimum of histrionics, this film tells a simple story about the legacy of the holocaust in Poland.

A college professor who once turned away a little Jewish girl who sought refuge is confronted by that same girl -- now in her forties -- and must explain to her the real reason for turning her away. While the two women are able to forge a deep friendship, the man (a tailor) who risked his life to try and save the girl has become, with time, too closed off to allow her to form any sort of bond with him. The film's last image, of the lonely tailor looking out the window of his shop to see the professor and her friend laughing together, has the same straight forward and unassuming emotional wallop that ends many of Kieslowski's films.

This may be the best fictional film ever made about the holocaust.

11 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
A woman haunted by the memories of her unhappy childhood., 15 April 2005

Author: Aquilant from Italy

Dekalog 8 introduces a debate about a situation described in the second episode of the series, with regard to some interesting researches about thematic morals made in an unadorned lecture hall. As in a game of mirrors, Kieslowski's magical poetry proposes subtle allusions, references, previous solutions analysed under different points of view.

The analysis of Elzbieta's personal story framed within the context of her restless past and recalled in the light of her present time made of painful and unavoidable confrontations proposes the harassing thought about our duty to God, about our moral obligations towards the Christian commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour". Is it possible to be merciful to our fellowmen even at the risk of violating the dictates of divine commandments? Are we allowed to help people even if we are aware about the incompatibility between the ethical principles applied to the evidences of religion and the intention of "bearing false witness against our neighbour" to a good purpose? Is it really possible to give up the idea of getting out of the clutches of the Nazi police a six-year-old Jewish child in the desperate need of a certificate of baptism only on account of moral and religious scruples? The dramatic explanation between Elzbieta, haunted by the memories of her unhappy childhood, and Zofia, the elder woman who refused to give her a passport to safety many years ago, call to our minds a sense of bewilderment and affliction.

Both of them are afraid of something going up in smoke around them and nothing escapes their remembrances of a painful past. Sad remembrances of course, because nothing hurts like the truth. Crude in the same manner as a vivisection of the soul. Conjured up with surgical precision in the coldness of an utterly impersonal ambient. Maybe only a cathartic face to face between the two women would give life to new friendly relations made of comprehension, explanations, reconciliations. Kieslowski divides all humanity into two parts: the saviors and the saved. His strict dialectics traces all the uneven steps of the story in a very subtle way. He likes to give back to human dignity its state of primitive and natural innocence, deeply upset by a pressing sense of misinterpreted obedience to the precepts of the Church.

4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
What a shame ! ! ! Mysterious are the vagaries of human mind., 18 August 2008

Author: Lalit Rao (cpowerccc@yahoo.com) from Paris, France

Dekalog 8: "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness" is a short film which will surely move any human being with heart to tears.By making this film,one of the greatest masters of Polish cinema Kieslowski has given birth to a highly mature work of art which needs to be seen at regular intervals to fathom the true meaning of human existence found in human heart.One can learn that there is no yardstick by which greatness or wickedness of an individual,a society,a nation or a religion can be measured.Everybody has reasons to accept or decline a good action."Dekalog,Osiem" suggests that individual sense prevails sometimes over a good act.Rules have to be broken on some occasions to save precious,human lives.It is a human instinct that old memories cannot be separated from human soul.This is the reason why old memories induce people to visit places where they could have died,see a house where they were hidden,meet a person who saved a life.This short film is remarkable for its depiction of young Polish university students.It is a good sign that young generation have been shown as interested in tackling ethical and moral questions.It is hard to say whether Kieslowski had ideas about the liberation of communist Poland in his mind when he was making this film.

8 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
False, 11 August 2006
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

Everyone, and I mean everyone who is alive, should spend some time with Kieslowski. And to do it right, you need to spend time with these ten experiments.

Yes, they are experiments and they are important to the history of cinematic imagination.

They are all cowritten. The writing partner sets a knot, a dramatic tangle. Kieslowski then enters this scribble and adds cinematic reality in two ways. The first is simply the cinematic platform of storytelling. The second are a set of cinematic elaborations. Its this second bit that makes him so exciting.

They're what I call cinematic folds, but because this is the short form (the movie equivalent of short stories) they only have to be suggested. Taken together, the collection of ten short films is a few hundred loose fishooks, many of which catch you unawares.

In his "colors" work he folds these back in his long form experiments.

To make this a real experience for us and him, he does most of his work after the project begins filming. And to up the ante, for each of these ten he uses a different creative crew. So you would expect some of these ten to be more adventurous and successful than others.

This is the case. This is the least successful of them so far.

The value, at least to me, in these is how much Kieslowski there is compared to Piesiewicz. The more of Kieslowski's visual improvisation, the better. This has very little. Blunt viewers will still enjoy the story, which is interesting as such things go. But there's little of the master here. Must have been a time of rest.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Best structured of the bunch, 31 July 2006

Author: Polaris_DiB from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

One of the most dynamically dramatic episodes of the Decalogue, this particular story also holds in its dialog the key to what drives a lot of the Decalogue segments along: the study of ethics and motivations. It starts out as a discussed reference to Decalogue 2, self-reflectively mocking the attempt to create ethical drama through cancer-patients, and then leads into a much more personal (is that even possible in this series?) look into the histories of the characters involved.

The funny thing is that in this one, the drama has already past... which is necessary for connecting to it the idea of the law, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." How does one know how false witness affects negatively the life-station of the people involved could not really be considered so soon after the fact, but instead needs a lifetime of confusion and personal guilt to show an aged person already suffering her own personal hell.

What's most interesting about this one is the irony, especially of an ethics professor claiming that the key to moral absolution comes through the survival of the innocent... and yet it is the survival of a young woman who creates her strongest moral dilemma. That is why this episode is the most self-reflexive, because it cannot of itself willingly claim an absolute understanding of events and moral dilemma.

--PolarisDiB

6 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
A poignant essay on theological reconciliation, 22 June 2003

Author: Jugu Abraham (jugu_abraham@yahoo.co.uk) from Trivandrum, Kerala, India

"Thou shalt not bear false witness" is the commandment in question being addressed by director Kieslowski. The anti-Jewish sentiment is merely a vehicle to study the Christian commandment threadbare. Is the concept of Christian charity second to a commandment? The film is ambiguous about the director/writer's view on this yet we suspect the director is not taking a clear stand. He does take a stand on the God within each of us--the goodness, the humane aspect of each of us is the last word.

This film is one of the few in which we seem to get a peek at the real Kieslowski. The initial parts of the film keep religion out of focus and in the background. The church/shrine at Leobowski is initially never shown in focus--you only see the lighted candles before an altar/shrine. Later in the film the Jewish girl is seen praying at the Christian site (an act confirmed later in the film through the dialogue).

The film begins with reproach of one wronged at age 6 by a "religious" Catholic who refuses to be charitable out of fear of repercussions, hiding behind the Commandment. The film ends with the main characters coming closer in a new bonding through understanding through re-evaluation of new facts and a theological reconciliation. Momentarily, even the viewer is made to suspect the Catholic woman's credibility as she presents her case to the grown-up "child". But the "wronged" child undergoes a transformation--she begins to like the woman who did not bear witness, a lonely woman whose son has left her, a remorseful woman teaching ethics.

The brilliant culmination of the film is the final presentation of the tailor's character--the man, a Christian, who was ready to save a Jewish child--who knowing everything refuses to discuss the past, present and future--a man who has evidently faced a lot of torment. He watches dispassionately the bonding between the two women as the film ends.

The elder woman anticipates the reaction of the tailor and waits outside the shop. The woman who straightens the stubborn painting that refuses to align, the woman who has lost her biological son in society, gains the understanding of the child she wronged. The goodness in man comes out in this episode of Dekalog, sometimes silently (the tailor), sometimes evocatively (the Jewish girl who prays alone after reconciling with religions and finding a different woman in the person she thought was different and inhuman).

The camera-work is not as good as in Dekalog 7, but the all performances and the minimalist music are just stunning.

However, there are questions left unanswered. What was the interruption in the classroom all about? Why was the opening scene of the child of 6 being led by an adult necessary? Why did the tailor not talk after recognizing her? Are there political metaphors here? I had the good fortune of meeting the Director 8 years before he made this film. How I wish I had met him now!

0 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Truly false witness, 23 September 2009
Author: R D from United States

"Simuland" him/herself bears false witness by spreading ignorance!: "What Polish underground? That must have been a really exclusive minority. There was no organized effort by any Polish underground to save Jews; whatever Jews happened to be rescued were done so by individuals acting on their own. To claim otherwise, as K. does, is to lie." FACT: Poland had the largest--and longest lived--underground in Europe during WWII! It gave France & Britain a copy of the Germans' enigma coding machine, & helped to crack the code. FACT: Future Georgetown University Jan Karski escaped to England to inform a doubting West of the Holocaust(including meetings with British foreign secretary Anthony Eden and President Franklin D. Roosevelt). FACT: Zegota (the Council to Aid Jews)was a branch of the Polish underground established to rescue Jews from the Nazis.Its express purpose was to aid the country's Jews and find places of safety for them in occupied Poland. Poland was the only country in occupied Europe with such a dedicated secret organization.

Simuland then continues to spew his bigotry: "Widespread deep-seated Polish anti-Semitism both predated and survived the Nazi invasion; Poles killed Jews even after the Nazi's retreated. To this day they make life insufferable for the scarce Jews who remain in their country. (I have this directly from a Jewish colleague who grew up in and fled modern Communist Poland.)" There was strong animosity on both sides toward each other. This came from centuries of antagonistic living in close quarters (predicated by Poland's unprecedented religious tolerance--which is why 90% of European Jews lived autonomously in pre-partitioned Poland). While some Poles did kill Jews, it is likewise true that some Jews killed Poles. To blame the entire populations for the actions of the few, would be like blaming all Americans for the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. Many Jews were communists (the 1st. head of the party in post-war Poland, for example), and helped the Soviets to select & deport 2 million Poles to Siberia after Stalin invaded & divided the country with his ally, Hitler, in 1939 (within a year, 1 million of these Poles were dead). The "pogrom" he alludes was political. In the Cold War, Moscow backed the Arabs against the U.S. backed Israel. It directed the Polish Communist Party to rid itself of its Jewish faction. The non-Jewish & Jewish factions of the party were bitter rivals.

6 out of 39 people found the following review useful:
Movie Itself Bears False Witness, 29 December 2000
Author: simuland from San Franciso

American Jewish Holocaust survivor returns to Poland to confront the woman who refused to save her from the Nazi's by refusing to falsify her Baptism papers when she was 6 (same age as the little girl of VII). This issue of the long-buried, unresolved/unresolvable hatred of the victim and guilt of the tormentor was much more effectively dramatized by the movie Death and the Maiden. As in VII, so much of the conflict takes place in the past, that the film ends up overly talky, too chatty. As usual, color coding intrudes.

Two major problems make the movie specious, morally duplicitous. One, the survivor's physical features, her thick lips, big nose, dark eyes, and coarse black hair, conform exactly to the derisive stereotype of the Jew used in myriad anti-Semitic cartoons dating from the 19th century through the 3rd Reich. It's like casting an African-American who looks just like a cartoon Sambo. Her homeliness stands in marked contrast to the attractiveness of each and every other female in the series. One can only wonder to what degree this was unintentional, unconscious, reflecting an accepted assumed bigotry.

Second, just like the contortionist in the park (was he meant to mock the film?), K. bends over backward to exonerate the Pole from guilt. The plot twist of her having received word in advance that the SS was sending out children in need of Baptism papers as decoys is just too convenient (again, that problem of credibility). Her belonging to the Polish underground is even harder to swallow, even more unlikely. What Polish underground? That must have been a really exclusive minority. There was no organized effort by any Polish underground to save Jews; whatever Jews happened to be rescued were done so by individuals acting on their own. To claim otherwise, as K. does, is to lie. Widespread deep-seated Polish anti-Semitism both predated and survived the Nazi invasion; Poles killed Jews even after the Nazi's retreated. To this day they make life insufferable for the scarce Jews who remain in their country. (I have this directly from a Jewish colleague who grew up in and fled modern Communist Poland.)

The bonding between victim and tormenter seems a hollow contrivance to evade responsibility. This is the only episode with a pat ending. In fact, it casts all those that preceded in a dubious light. It itself bears false witness.

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