August 21-27, 2003
screen picks
The Decalogue ($79.95 DVD) In his introduction to Facets Videoís new edition of Krzysztof Kieslowskiís epic work, Roger Ebert suggests that viewers approach the 10-part series in small steps, perhaps viewing one hourlong film each night. Itís a prudent suggestion; the moral conundrums posed by each interlinked film are thorny enough to merit serious reflection, more than could be squeezed into the five- or 10-minute gaps between segments that characterized seeing the complete series in the theater. But as sensible as Ebertís suggestion is, spreading out the films actually decreases their power, since The Decalogue is much more than the sum of its parts.
It doesn't take much reflection to realize that human connectivity is the major theme of the last part of Kieslowski's career. The characters in The Decalogue's 10 episodes -- each of which takes its theme from one of the Ten Commandments -- all live in the same dingy public-housing complex, and the protagonists of one story occasionally turn up as minor characters in another. In The Double Life of Veronique, two identical women find their lives almost mystically entwined, although they live in different countries and have never met, and the Three Colors trilogy used The Decalogue's interlinking device to even greater effect, culminating with the ultimate in modern amalgamation: the birth of a unified Europe.
In Kieslowski's hands, what might be merely a formal gimmick (like the gunshot that links the disparate stories in Mystery Train) becomes a reflection on fate, society and the power of film. The opening section of Decalogue Five, inspired by the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," intercuts the actions of three seemingly unrelated characters: a misanthropic taxi driver engages in acts of petty sadism; a troubled young man wanders the streets, indulging temptations to kindness and cruelty in equal measure; and a young law student sweats out his oral exams, formulating a fervent critique of capital punishment.
The logic of film, if nothing else, dictates that the characters must figure into each others' lives, and so they do: The troubled young man murders the taxi driver, and the lawyer unsuccessfully defends him, eventually bearing witness to his execution. But where most filmmakers let the similarity between the machinery of fate and the machinery of cinema pass unnoticed, Kieslowski rejects the implicit equation of director and deity. A certain degree of omniscience is inevitable, but the camera's privileged position offers no special insight; the crime, like most crimes, remains meaningless, arbitrary. Before he's throttled the cab driver with a piece of thin rope, then bashed in his skull with a metal bar, the murderer-to-be actually seems like the more pleasant of the two. True, he's shown callously dropping a rock off a freeway overpass, walking away as the cars screech and crash below him, but he shares a tender smile with two little girls through a coffee-shop window, and affectionately cradles a photo of what seems to be a deceased relative. The cabbie, by contrast, is a uniformly mean-spirited lout, leaving passengers to wait in the rain, then speeding off without them, a vicious smile on his lips.
None of this suggests that the victim in any way "deserves" his fate, or absolves the killer of his guilt. Instead, Kieslowski challenges the assumption that death has any moral valence at all, that there can ever be such a thing as a "good kill." In an interview included with the DVD set, Kieslowski, who disliked categorization even more than most filmmakers, angrily responds to a journalist who characterizes Decalogue Five as an anti-capital-punishment film. "It's not against capital punishment," he fumes. "It's against killing." The state-sanctioned execution is depicted with no less horror than the "lawless" murder, and the mute figure who shows up at nearly every Decalogue's moment of truth appears twice, signaling that the episode contains not one crime, but two. (Kieslowski rejected the idea that the figure might represent God; his silent visage might as well be that of the documentary filmmaker Kieslowski once was, watching horrors unfold, helpless to do more than witness.)
Kieslowski later expanded Five to make A Short Film About Killing, and indeed, it's one of few Decalogue episodes that truly stands on its own. One, which transcribes "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" as a literal-minded allegory about the pitfalls of scientific hubris, is so heavy-handed it's only excusable as a scene-setter for what's to come. Ten, by contrast, recasts "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods" as the comic tale of two brothers feuding over their late father's stamp collection; on its own, it's merely fluff, but it serves as a well-placed palate cleanser.
Generally speaking, it's best to bring each episode's respective commandment into the mix only after you've watched it. The Decalogue's most thought-provoking segments are often those that relate least directly to the commandment they ostensibly illustrate. In Three, a man leaves his family on Christmas Eve to help his former mistress search for her missing husband; rather than literally interpreting "Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy" (a dull prospect), the film substitutes the sacredness of family for that of the church, going on to wonder what reasons might exist for violating it. Though Seven, "Thou shalt not steal," begins with a straightforward act of theft -- a kidnapping -- the developing plot dissects the negative consequences of treating people as property. The commandments ascribed to Six ("Thou shalt not commit adultery") and Nine ("Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife") would apply more obviously if switched, but it's clear Kieslowski has little interest in proselytizing or easy answers.
There are a few bones to pick with Facets' three-DVD set: image quality that only occasionally rises above fair, subtitles that are awkwardly translated and occasionally absent, and a lively, antagonistic Q&A between Kieslowski and a handful of Polish critics that's unfortunately dubbed into English, so instead of hearing Kieslowski's exasperation, you're listening to a translator imitating his tone of voice. Still, given the long, rocky road The Decalogue has traveled -- an earlier edition was released, quickly went out of print and has been commanding collector's prices for years -- the current version feels like a gift from, well, whomever you believe in.
Divorce Iranian Style (Mon., Aug. 25, 9 p.m.; Tue., Aug. 26, 7:30 a.m.; Sat., Aug. 30, 12:30 p.m., Sundance Channel) This precursor to Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini's Runaway (shown at the 2002 Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema) turns out to be an even more powerful look at the condition of women in Iran. In an Iranian divorce court, the camera watches with an unblinking eye worthy of a Frederick Wiseman film, as marital disputes play out with different rules but familiar roots. At first, Longinotto's sparse narration focuses on obvious differences, like the courthouse's separate entrances for men and women; the former are checked for weapons and cell phones, the latter for adherence to Islamic dress code. (One woman is barred from entering until she's removed her makeup.) Inside, the issues at play include such unfamiliar concepts as dowries and polygyny, not to mention the gross inequality of women under Iran's fundamentalist Islamic law. The film's most eye-opening segments, though, expose the toll such strictures take on both women and men; as a wife demands that her husband admit his impotence to a judge (one of very few grounds under which women may seek divorce), his blustery façade crumbles, reduced to a panic-stricken wreck at the thought of admitting his supposed failure in front of witnesses. That's not, of course, to say that women don't have it worse, but perhaps if Iranian men could see the way fundamentalism reduces their lives as well, they'd be a lot quicker to push for change.
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