Krzysztof Kieslowski, an incredible Polish filmmaker, produced a series called The Decalogue because he believed that politics could not change people, but creating a film that evokes questions on deep core issues can make an even greater impact on someone’s character. The method Kieslowski uses to accomplish this is by dramatizing his points through his characters’ actions rather than just hashing them out with words. Analyzing his films under the Jewish hermeneutic principle of Midrash requires studying the film for both deep and comparative meaning relating to religion and law. In both of the films we saw, there was a central theme based on which of the Ten Commandments they were supposed to address. Midrash does not directly discussing which of the Ten Commandments it is analyzing, instead, it causes the viewer to question what it means when it says “You shall have no other gods before me” as well as what “You shall not murder” in a very different light than normally discussed.
In Decalogue One, the way that Kieslowski shows the first commandment that no other gods are before Yaweh is by showing the lives of one small family of a dad, a son and an aunt and what has begun to replace faith in a deity. The father has begun to believe in the power of technology and bases very important decisions in life on what math and computers say. When the calculations of the computer fail him and his son dies because ice breaks when it should not have, he is forced to reconsider his faith. One would normally say that from the way the father described death to his son, he did not believe in anything, but the film actually brought in the idea that the father did not worship a god instead he made technology his god. Midrash, or deep and comparative meaning was evident also through the types of visual symbols used in the film. He uses three visual symbols through the film, computers/technology, the frozen holy water, and the god man at the fire, all to portray a stark emotional revelation that occurs. The father says that he will entrust anything, even something as complex as understanding a language to a computer or as important as letting his son go on ice that is proven to be frozen through, but in the end the computer fails him and the viewer of the film must analyze whether it is safe to put faith in a man-made creation. The god man is sitting in front of a fire when the dog dies and the little boy finds him, he is sitting at the fire when the dad is searching, and he is sitting at the fire presumably when the boys drown in the ice, or at least the fire is still burning. Through all of this fire is eternal, always burning, when people are searching, living life, and when people die. And Kieslowski never explains why he always shows the man at the fire, he just wants people to question what his importance is. Finally, the frozen water represents the father frozen and unfeeling faith, as it melts next to his head in his hands, it is representative of all of the stipulations he had placed on an unseen God who he believed did not care and began to weep.
All of these situations in the film helps the viewer begin to connect the different sections of the film and understand how our society is so willing to put our faith in something tangible like technology, but in the end, even that fails us. Kieslowski uses feelings in the film to portray his heavy point that no matter how much we lean on our own creation and ideas, pain is pain, loss is loss, and technology cannot change those. He uses the film to show someone that every individual must make a decision of what he really believes, the aunt had faith in God, the father had faith in technology and the son did not understand what to believe. All of it in the end left everyone in excruciating pain over the loss of such a wonderful sweet and intelligent son. He did not use a far off example that was hard for other to relate, instead, the simplest story told it all and causes anyone watching the film to question what our life and existence is really about.
In the sixth Decalogue, God tells us that we should not commit murder and the plotline of the story is comparing the differences behind a calculated cold-blooded murder and a legal death sentence as murder. Kieslowski uses the god-man in some of the scenes to convey a message throughout. In one scene he is holding a measuring stick in the middle of the road and allows the taxi with Jacek and the taxi driver to pass through even though the Jacek is on the way to murder this man. As he stands with the standard, Jacek sinks into the shadows of the backseat as if he knows what he is doing is wrong and needs to hide. Both of the murders are calculated with rope, precise measurements, and plans but one is ugly and not socially acceptable, the other is precise, down to the bin to catch anything unwanted so that the clean up afterwards is not messy. One is okay because the law says so, but the lawyer who defends Jacek says in the end to an open field, “I abhor it!” because he questions any death as being permissible. This raises the obvious question of “Is the death penalty okay?” but it also raises deep questions of what the lawyer just became qualified to do, be a part of the justice system, to uphold the law. The lingering question though is the law correct? The way that Kieslowski addresses this issue is by making a real-life experience of someone who struggled with his little sister’s death and has not learned how to cope with life, children, especially little girls have an effect on him but cannot deter him from his destructive road. He was on the road to almost get revenge for his sister’s death, just as the state was taking revenge for his atrocious actions by taking his life. But, if one looks at Judaism, one would see that the Bible states that revenge is for the Lord to take, not humans. Jacek’s last request was to buried with his family, taking his mother’s place, and his last action was to get a few puffs on a cigarette. This shows the lack of eternal perspective; he cared more about his resting place than where he was going eternally. Also, he wanted a temporal satisfaction with the unfiltered nicotine instead of dwelling on more important issues. The film raises multiple questions as it compares two types of murders, a sanctioned one and unsanctioned one, the men’s reactions to the knowledge that they were facing death and the stipulations around them.
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