Decalogue - Anna Harrison

Decalogue is a ten episode Polish series about the ten commandments and is done in a way that it is not immediately recognized as having religious context. The first episode primarily follows a young boy named Pavel and his father, and relates the first commandment which is "thou shall have no other god before me". In the beginning of the episode, Pavel asks both his father and aunt about death and the meaning of life after seeing a dead dog. His father tells him that there is no soul; people live on in memories, whereas the aunt believes there is a soul. Pavel and his father both have a shared interest in computers and mathematical formulas, and this can be interpreted as the father's god. He put his faith into the computer when calculating the strength of the ice on the lake, for example. When he is told that the ice broke, he does not believe that it is possible. There is Midrash that evokes feeling in the viewer as we see the emotional reactions to Pavel's death in the lake, and the concept of darash, or comparative meaning, is seen in the television screen in both the opening and closing shots in the episode displays a video of Pavel recorded at school earlier. The viewer does not know in the beginning who the boy on the screen is or that he is dead, but the same shot at the end reveals its meaning.

The second episode that we watched covered "thou shall not kill". The remez, or deeper meaning, reflects something that the lawyer said: "law should not imitate nature but improve it". This episode follows a young criminal as he commits various crimes, including murder, as well as a new lawyer who is tasked with defending him. In the end, both characters were punished. The criminal was executed for his crimes, and the lawyer had to live with the knowledge that he was unable to save the young man from this fate. While the execution was legal and ordered by the government, it can be seen as just as wrong as murder, because it was also premeditated.

Both episodes included a god-like character, a mysterious older man who seemed to appear in critical scenes. In the first episode, he was a homeless man sitting near a fire who appeared at the frozen lake where Pavel died as well as near the dead dog Pavel finds. The second episode shows this character in the street with a measuring rod as the criminal passes by, seemingly metaphorically measuring him. He also appears carrying a ladder and gets beaten in the urinal by the criminal. I think the point of this character is to personify God and to add some mystery to his presence.

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