Criterion Collection: Dekalog | Blu-ray Review

Since the inception of cinema, there are few filmmakers who have successfully achieved a simultaneous mixture of formidable narrative scope and cinematographic prowess. But Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieslowski breaches such a tenuous notion of sublimity (or, in the same breath, a semblance of perfection) with his monolithic achievement, Dekalog, a ten part film with each chapter modeled on one of the Ten Commandments, at least how they relate to mankind in contemporary social structures (here, late 80s Poland). Stanley Kubrick famously described the film as the only masterpiece he could name in his own lifetime, and it is certainly one of the most affluent cinematic examples deserving of such a lazily bandied laurel. Each segment is named numerically, but each remains ambiguous about the conceptualization of any particular commandment, some seeming to overlap, others potentially neglected. Neither extolling religious discourse or an approximation of a Biblical saga, Kieslowski instead focuses on the residents living in one particular housing complex in late-Communist Poland (not unlike the recent United States of Love from Tomasz Wasilewski, 2016) for a subtly humanistic portrait of intersecting lives, themes, and moral conundrums.

Kieslowski starts off with the compelling juxtaposition of science and religion with the first chapter, a segment also indicative of continuous symbolism and frequent extra textual metaphors, as evidenced by an opening shot on an unnamed man (Artur Barcis, who also appeared in Kieslowski’s No End), sitting by a fire near a frozen lake outside the apartment complex, who we realize appears on the periphery in each segment under differing circumstances. In her admirable examination of the auteur’s work in the 1999 publication Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski, Annette Insdorf makes an efficient, deliberate deconstruction of these symbols, famously comparing the mysterious reappearing figure to the mournful angels of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987), beings fated to watch the unfolding tragicomedy of human existence but unable to intervene. But the first segment deals specifically with the death of a child, Pawel (Wojciech Klata), who we meet asking his father Krzysztof (Henryk Baranowski) nonchalantly about the subject over morning coffee, which quickly becomes a morbid conversation about the potential meaningless of life. “What’s it matter when Piggy catches Kermit?” he observes. Krzysztof is a brilliant professor hard at work developing a viable means of artificial intelligence, as evidenced by his interactions with his home computer, which he has designed to engage in light household duties while experimenting with the machine’s reaction to philosophical questions. Pawel’s aunt Irena (Maja Komorowska) is a religious woman, who has a different approach to explaining life’s meaning, defining it as a responsibility and joy in being able to help others.

The second chapter is less devastating but seems modeled specifically after soapy Sirkian melodrama (or perhaps Godard’s A Married Woman). Dorota (Krystyna Janda) is a violinist, but her husband is dying, apparently on his death bed in the hospital. She accosts the doctor (Aleksander Bardini) who lives in her building, imploring he reveal knowledge about whether her husband will actually she die. She has to know because she’s carrying another man’s child, a lover who plays in the same orchestra. If her husband will live, she has to abort the baby, according to her moral values. But if he is to die, she would keep the child and most likely pursue a relationship with her lover. The doctor is concerned because any information he divulges could affect the trajectory of an unborn child. Rather than placate her, he dances around the diagnosis, revealing to her he believes in a private God. The symbol of a wasp crawling painstakingly out of a sappy jar of fruit next to his hospital bed seems to represent the dying man’s struggle to cling to life, against all odds.

In the third segment, the same kind of domestic drama (enhanced by a melancholy score) continues when Janusz (Daniel Olbrychski) takes his wife and children to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. There, he spies an old lover, Eva (Maria Pakulnis), who calls him later in the evening to reveal her husband Edward has left her and could Janusz please come drive her around to look for him? Eventually, it’s revealed they still have feelings for one another and Edward actually left three years ago, but Eva has vowed to herself if Janusz spends the night with her, she won’t commit suicide, much like the romantic scenario of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair (adapted, respectively, by Edward Dmytryk in 1955 and Neil Jordan in 1999).

Chapter four switches tones drastically with a disturbing treatment on incest, which is subtly but surely revealed through father Michal (Janusz Gajos) and adult daughter Anka’s (Adrianna Biedrzynska) interactions, beginning with his eavesdropping on a phone conversation with her boyfriend. Young and unkempt, Anka, an aspiring actress currently rehearsing a production of Romeo and Juliet (two opposing sequences speak subconscious volumes about her character’s desire towards her father figure), reads a letter from her dead mother about Michal and the likelihood this wasn’t her real father. It’s something Michal always suspected but never wanted to address, but Anka thinks this is the answer to all her sexual escapades and difficulty in commitments because the man she really desires is Michal.

The fifth segment is actually better known better in its longer version, as the stand alone film A Short Film About Killing. An indictment on capital punishment, a passionately idealistic lawyer (Krzysztof Globisz) is seen arguing for the life of his client in-between flashbacks of the client (Miroslaw Baka) brutally murdering a taxi driver. Of all the cinematographer’s Kieslowski dispatched on Dekalog, it is Slawomir Idziak’s putrid, amber soaked desaturated frames which court the most visceral reaction, his visuals often occluded by other objects or the encroaching blackness from the periphery.

And segment six is also more famously known as the melancholic A Short Film About Love, in which Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) a young postal worker living with his mother, is obsessed with the beautiful Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska), a free-wheeling artist who lives across the courtyard. Spying on her and her lovers through his telescope, he begins to find ways to enter Magda’s orbit, first as a delivery boy, and then by sending her fake notices from the post office which require her to stop in and see him. Eventually tables becomes turned when Magda discovers Tomek to be a peeping tom, accelerating the nature of their interactions, which proves to have a tragic effect on the young man.

Uncomfortable domestic dynamics make up the struggle between a mother and daughter in segment seven. Imperious school master Eva (Anna Polony) has always treated Majka (Maja Barelkowska) as something of a disappointment. It’s initially unclear why Majka decides to kidnap her six-year-old sister Ania after being expelled from school. Until we learn Ania is actually Majka’s daughter, and she was made pregnant by her teacher, Wojtek (the always commendable Boguslaw Linda, who’d recently starred in Kieslowski’s delayed Blind Chance). Taking her daughter to see Wojtek, who now lives a solitary existence assembling teddy bears from home, it is clear Majka desires to escape her mother’s commanding home, though she hasn’t clearly devised a plan of action. It’s also hinted Wojtek might also have had something inappropriate going on with Eva when he worked for her, which makes all this more fraught when the frantic woman tries to track down Ania and Majka, finally trapped at a train station where a kindly attendant reading Madame Bovary attempts to lie for the distressed Majka.

Episode eight deals almost entirely with circumstances of the past. Zofia (Maria Koscoalkowska) is a highly regarded philosophy professor who receives a surprise visit from Elzbieta (Teresa Marcewska), a younger woman of Polish descent who champions Zofia in New York. As Zofia gives a lecture on ‘ethical hell,’ Elzbieta provides the class with a ‘hypothetical’ situation concerning a couple in Nazi occupied Poland who refuse to hide a young Jewish girl even though initially they’d agreed to do it, endangering the child by forcing her to leave their home after curfew. As Elzbieta clutches at the cross hanging at her neck, the concerned Zofia’s expression hints at her personal involvement in the story as the woman who denied the girl refuge. As we discover, she had her reasons. It’s here where Kieslowski’s own personal sentiments are actually uttered by a character, as “everyone has a story to tell.”

Kieslowski’s ninth segment is structured more like a dramatic thriller, as an impotent surgeon Roman (Piotr Machalica) learns he will never regain an erection due to a medical condition, which leads him to advise wife Hanka (Eva Blaszczyk) to divorce him. She refuses, placating him by eschewing sexual pleasure in honor of love, which makes it all the more devastating for Roman when he discovers she is actually having an affair with one of her students, Maurice, a young man also hopelessly in love with her. Miscommunication and guilty motivations lead to a finale perhaps more playfully Chabrolian than Hitchcockian in that the events are not so thrilling as they are emotionally unfortunate.

Surprisingly, Kieslowski ends his saga with the series’ lightest segment. Two estranged brothers reunite when their father dies, a man who wasn’t known for being particularly emotional or caring. Jerzy (Jerzy Stuhr) informs his rock-singer brother Artur (Zbigniew Zamachowski) about dad’s passing, and everyone seems rather nonchalant about the death of a man whose greatest passion was collecting stamps. Inadvertently, they learn several of these stamps are worth a fortune. Sadly, Jerzy already gave some of them to is son, who traded them for other items with a schoolmate, who in turn pawned them to a collector who had a better idea of their worth. In order to retain a stamp worth even more, which the pawnshop owner seems to know about, Jerzy agrees to give one of his kidney’s to save the merchant’s daughter (his asking price). What follows is an increasingly anxious scenario on greed, while, meanwhile, everything else about their father’s empty apartment remains in disarray.

Disc Review:

Criterion presents what is perhaps the most exciting and accomplished disc set of the year with this phenomenal 4K digital transfer from original 35mm camera negatives, with eight of the twelves films presented in their original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (Dekalog: Five, Dekalog: Six, and their two longer counterparts A Short Film About Killing, A Short Film About Love are in their original aspect ratio, 1.70:1). Picture and sound quality, including uncompressed monaural soundtracks, are masterful—this is, finally, the definitive edition of this masterwork. Not to be ignored are a bounty of extra features (an entire disc of this set is devoted to supplements), plus a book featuring an essay from cinema scholar Paul Coates.

On the Set of Dekalog:
During the production of Dekalog: Two, this brief three-and-a-half minute interview with Kieslowski was recorded for Polish television in 1987 or 1988.

A Short Film About Dekalog:
Film students Eileen Anipare and Jason Wood of the University of North London recorded a January 1995 interview with Kieslowski, and Criterion includes twenty minutes worth of excerpts from their documentary here.

Kieslowski at the National Film Theater:
Twenty-three minutes of audio excerpts from this 1990 interview with Kieslowski conducted by film critic Derek Malcolm for an audience at the National Film Theater in London is included here.

Annette Insdorf:
Criterion produced this 2016 program on Annette Insdorf, author of Double Lives, Second Changes: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski, who examines the formal and thematic patterns of Dekalog in this twenty-eight minute feature, such as the use of space, liquid, and reappearances (but do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of her book, where she also examines the differences between the actual screenplays for Dekalog and what ended up on film).

Cast and Crew:
A number of archival interviews are included from various cast and crew, including a 2003 interview recorded for the Polish home video release of Dekalog featuring screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz (twenty-five minutes), thirteen actors (twenty-one minutes), and DP Slawomir Idziak (a brief three minute segment). Criterion produced several 2016 interviews, including with editor Ewa Smal (fifteen minutes), and cinematographers Wieslaw Zdort (of Dekalog: One, fifteen minutes), and Witold Adamek (of Dekalog: Six/A Short Film About Love, twelve minutes).

Hanna Krall:
Criterion produced this 2016 fifteen minute interview with Hanna Krall, a journalist and confidante of Kieslowski’s.

Final Thoughts:

Although shot by nine different DPs, one editor (Ewa Smal), and two screenwriters (Kieslowski and Kryzystof Piesiewicz, who first worked together on No End and would continue to collaborate with the auteur, including on the Three Colors trilogy, and even the planned trilogy of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, all directed by separate filmmakers after Kieslowski’s death) managed to make this sprawling philosophical, emotional, dramatic, intelligent cosmos a seamless, addictive epic. Truly, one of the few aweing cinematic endeavors managing to stand as a major artistic achievement, Kieslowski’s Dekalog is a cinematic accomplishment as compelling and poetic as it is ambitious.

Film Review: ★★★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
Disc Review: ★★★★★/☆☆☆☆☆