Decalogue Midrash

The first commandment depicted by Kieslowski, I am the lord your God etc. is an example of Midrash in that it applies contemporary issues facing Mosaic theism, namely, the rise of secular technology. The short film is overt, if not shamelessly so, in its message: there can be no substitute for the true God, and all other gods fall inevitably short. The father in this film is said to be an agnostic of sorts, finding belief in God difficult because of His transcendent nature, but not difficult to the point of outright denial. However, it is clear that to this man, technology and science have absolutely no limits; he gives a point in seeming opposition to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s claims regarding the limits of language, claiming that true meaning could be captured if a machine with sufficient memory capacity existed. Eventually, in predictable fashion, the golden calf of the father is destroyed in spectacular fashion with the death of his son, who had his blessing to go skating (he died while so doing) based on scientific measurements he had taken. Such a visceral illustration of the first commandment not only helps us understand the meaning in a universally approachable manner, but has the emotional weight to drive home the point. The moral of the story is, of course, never trust communist government organizations, they can’t even take the temperature right.
The next short film, illustrating the fifth commandment, is of markedly lower quality. The first half of the film is devoted to showing the events leading up to a murder of a taxi driver, from the point of view of the both victim and the murderer. The young man is shown to be thoughtlessly destructive, while the driver is shown to be boorish and equally despicable. The point of this is to show 1.) the premeditation of the young man which establishes a later parallel and 2.) to show that neither of the individuals involved in the crime were contributing much to society. Once the young man commits his crime, he is arrested and sentenced to death. The second half is devoted to showing the premeditated manner in which the young man’s death is arranged, attempting to create a sense of irony. The intention here is clear, according to the fifth commandment; no one should kill, regardless of their position of earthly authority. This ignores the fact that the death penalty was enforced by mosaic society, which should clearly be seen as the authority in interpreting this law. The Midrash interpretation here attempts again to apply biblical concepts to contemporary issues, but fails in that it refuses to acknowledge the hypocrisy in its foundation that is very much the same as the one it is lambasting.