Elizabeth Trevisan Decalogue

Midrash is supposed to make you think of the deeper meaning within something and the comparative meaning that makes it personal to yourself. I think that midrash makes things more complex because the meaning of a movie, for example, is not cut and dry. It makes you think deeper and makes you find the meaning within the film for yourself. Kieslowski did a good job of finding and choosing narratives for each of the Ten Commandments that related to the correlating commandant but were not just black and white. the two episodes we saw in class were emotional and made me think more of what I would do if I was in the shoes of certain characters from each episode. I think using film made it easier to convey the emotion within the episodes, at least within such a short amount of time. In the first episode, We were able to see a lot of the young boy character and it made me feel attached to him in a short amount of time, as well as protective since he's such a young kid. so when he ended up falling through the ice and dying, it was hard not to feel upset about that happening. 
Something that made the midrash more easy to understand were some visuals that were very obviously related to religion. For example, when the father destroys the altar oh, the candles drip wax on the Virgin Mary's face and it appears that she is crying because of how the wax Falls. This is a  more clear indication that religion is the undertone of the message that Kieslowski is trying to get across. The fact that Kieslowski died fairly young is sad because the way that he was able to have his own interpretation of something, but then also make that be relatable on a personal level to all of his viewers is really special. I enjoy a lot of movies, but they don't all make me feel the need to reflect and dive deeper into the meaning of the film. 
I have a harder time making a personal connection with the second episode we watched. I did not feel any sort of remorse for the main character. However, the character of the lawyer was relatable to me because the storyline with him seeing the other guy right before he killed the taxi driver was interesting. I think it could make anyone think back to a time where they wish they could have stopped a friend from doing something or something similar that could have impacted another person's life in a positive way.

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