Welcome back to another edition of the Dailies, where I take a closer look at some of the films I’ve watched over the recent past. Generally, I do two “trailerz”, in which I briefly discuss a couple of films and my opinions on them, and then write an essay on the third film in the column.
Over the holidays, I finally put a decent dent in my Netflix queue and watched way too many movies, so I’m going to take the brief approach to all of them. Hopefully that doesn’t offend any of my diehard fans.
Remember the last Dailies column, published on 11/29/09? Of course you don’t! In that column, my essay discussed Volumes I-III of “the Decalogue”, a mini-series produced for Polish television in 1989. You can see that, if you want to, here. We’ll get started by finishing our discussion of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s masterpiece, and later in the week we’ll move on to other areas.
Trailerz
“Dekalog” (or “the Decalogue”), Volumes IV-VII
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Principal Actors: Episode IV: Adrianna Biedrynska, Janusz Gajos; Episode V: Miroslaw Baka, Krzysztof Globisz; Episode VI: Grazyna Szapolowska, Olaf Lubaszenko; Episode VII: Anna Polony, Maja Barelkowska, Wladyslaw Kowalski
Volumes IV-VII pick up right where the first three editions of “the Decalogue” left off, with more tales of the emotionally drained, morally confused inhabitants of a high-rise apartment building in late 80s Warsaw. The Biblical theme persists, with each chapter of “the Decalogue” pertaining to one or more of the Ten Commandments in some way.
Volume IV concerns a young girl who lives with her single father. One day, the father goes away on business, and she finds a letter in her father’s desk marked “Open after my death”. Without spoiling the plot of the story, this letter results in a discussion between the girl and her father as to who her real father is and the nature of their relationship. Volume IV might have been my least favorite volume of “the Decalogue”, because it was very heavy on dialogue and low on symbolism. Of course, I’m all in favor of films moved along by well-written dialogue, but because the language was Polish, I actually feel like I lost something in the translation and didn’t pick up on certain things that were said between the two that would have painted the nature of their relationship in a clearer light. “The Decalogue”, despite portraying rather complicated storylines and rather complicated characters, becomes quite simple to understand when we see the sullen face of a protagonist thinking about their next decision amidst personal chaos. We all understand that, no matter the language. If I was fluent in Polish, I might think Volume IV is brilliant, but I feel I was missing something.
Volume V is one of my personal favorites, following a young man (Baka) who indiscriminately kills a taxi cab driver in brutal fashion. The juxtaposition of his murder of the cab driver and the ensuing countdown towards his own federal execution clearly shows Kieslowski’s disdain for capital punishment. Baka is terrific as a stupid kid who did a terrible thing, and his ensuing terror as he is led to the gallows of the prison is one of the most haunting scenes in the series.
Volume VI might be the best film in “the Decalogue”. It concerns a young peeping tom in the high-rise (Lubaszenko) who constantly watches a pretty woman across the courtyard (Szapolowska). He’s madly in love with her, and devises various schemes by which he can interact with her. He eventually outs himself as a peeper and she then plays with him in order to destroy his youthful, innocent vision of love and affection. It’s not clear if she succeeds, but she realizes that her life is unrewarding and unfulfilling and the young man can actually give her something she desperately needs. Volume VI was expanded into an 86 minute film, A Short Film About Love. It is absolutely terrific, and marks the high point of a series filled with them.
Finally, Volume VII, another strong entry. In this edition, a 22-year old female, Majka (Barelkowska) lives with her parents and an infant girl. The young girl is actually the daughter of Majka, but Majka’s mother is ashamed that her daughter reared a child at such a young age and treats the young child as if she were her own daughter. Majka is not allowed to display motherly affection for the girl in public and is not allowed to tell anyone that the girl is hers. Eventually, she breaks, and kidnaps the young girl so that they can go to a place where she can actually raise the child as her own daughter. In the end, Majka’s desire for independence and freedom for her mother end up even trumping her love of her daughter. A- for the entire disc.
“Dekalog” (or “the Decalogue”), Volumes VIII-X
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Principal Actors: Episode VIII: Teresa Marczewska, Maria Koscialkowska; Episode IX: Ewa Blasczyk, Piotr Machalica, Jan Jankowski; Episode X: Jerzy Stuhr, Zbigniew Zamachowski
“The Decalogue” ends with the final three volumes, starting with Volume VIII. This was another volume where I didn’t quite follow everything that was going on and why, but I managed to enjoy it nonetheless when I started putting the pieces together. A woman in her forties, Elzbieta (Marczewska) confronts an elderly professor of ethics (Koscialkowska) at the University of Warsaw. The elderly woman had a chance during World War II to save the life of the younger woman (at the time a child), but due to various political and personal factors at the time, chose not to. She believed the young girl to be dead until this confrontation, done expertly during one of Koscialkowska’s ethics lectures, guised as a legitimate question. They work with each other to ease the other’s pain; one who had lost faith in humanity at such a young age, and the other who never knew what happened to the little girl she refused.
Volume IX is another winner; in it, Roman (Machalica) is deemed impotent by a doctor, and he immediately considers his marriage to be over. His wife (Blasczyk), states her undying loyalty to her husband, but he pushes her away, believing she deserves better than an impotent, aging man. Without his knowledge, she has been acting on his lack of devotion for some time, shacking up with a local college student. His attempts at sleuthing and the various interjections of fate that occur are brilliantly written and orchestrated, but the idea is perhaps overly simple: they didn’t realize how much they actually loved and needed each other until they were unable to manifest that love physically.
Finally, Volume X, which adds some levity to the proceedings, even though it doesn’t sound like a very light or funny story. In it, two brothers are summoned to attend their father’s funeral and browse his belongings. Their father was a stamp collector, you see, and he actually appears in a couple of the earlier “Decalogue” volumes (notably Volume VIII) proudly showing off his latest additions. The father was obsessed with his collection; the boys rarely visited him and he needed something to occupy his time with. Beyond that, however, the collection made him feel young; only a boy or girl could feel elated after purchasing a rare stamp and only a child would have such a singular determination to pursue something, in the end, so meaningless. The two brothers eventually realize that their father’s stamp collection is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they don’t sell it. Instead, they both undergo a transformation, realizing what their father saw in collecting stamps and beginning to act like children themselves in trying to add rare pieces to the collection. In the end, they are robbed, and though devastated, they resolve to start a new collection, for their father and themselves. Fantastic stuff. A for the entire disc.
I’ll return shortly with Little Dieter Needs to Fly, The Public Enemy (from 1931, not the recent crapfest), The Battleship Potemkin, Reservoir Dogs, and Flaming Lips documentary The Fearless Freaks.
John Lacey
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