Patricia Ohanian blog- Dekalogue 2/6/2020




              Midrash is defined as an “underlying significance” or “a method of interpretation”.  It originates from Jewish text, as the text leaves many things up to interpretation of the reader.  The series “the Dekalogue” is ten-part series, where each episode investigates each of the commandments. 

The first episode follows the story of a father, who is breaking the first commandment:

            “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.”

The father is breaking this commandment as he is putting his faith entirely in technology.  His computer, his measurement methods of the ice… he has full faith that technological certainty can outweigh any sort of external variable.  In short, he believes that things are not out of our control, that we as humans possess the knowledge to avoid bad events.  However, God is the overarching source of power, and everything in our life is actually out of our control.  He faces this when he measures the ice and is certain that it is safe.  However, he and the computer calculated incorrectly, or there was a variable that he was not aware of, and his son died and fell through the ice. 

            The second episode investigates the fifth commandment:

            “Thou shall not kill.”

This episode shows us multiple examples of murder.  One is when he strangles the taxi driver with rope from the backseat.  It’s a long scene, brutal and hard to watch.  As the audience, you feel uncomfortable and that it is wrong.  The other example of murder is the sentence of the death penalty. 

I think that midrash in this series comes in to play a lot.  Is one murder worse than the other?  Should he have trusted that the ice was safe?  Should we rely on technology as much as we rely on God?  Do we have control over ourselves or is everything out of our control?  The midrash comes in because there is an obvious, surface level plot in each episode, but then there is another lower level plot that we cannot really see as easily.  It takes our interpretation and mindfulness to investigate the other issues that come up. 

The way that the Dekalogue is filmed, it makes you feel like you are in the room, in the seat of the car with them, on the phone with them waiting for their response.  It makes you feel like you are a part of the scene.  This heightens the midrash even further, giving you the feeling that you are there, trying to interpret what is happening around you.  You see scenes of the characters alone, interacting with the other characters.  You see them thinking about the decisions they are going to make, and then carrying them out.  It gives you extra insight to their thoughts and feelings, maybe making you side with them- or not.

I think it is inherently human to break the ten commandments at times.  Its not what my Catholic school education would want me to say, but I believe that its true.  I think we all “worship” our phones, our sport, our personal appearance, etc.  We may not be murdering, but we may kill people with our words or kill our bodies with drugs or alcohol.  I think the reason this series is so influential and interesting is that it puts these commandments that seem sort of concrete and far off into real life, modern situations and terms.  The midrash comes in because there are so many things that complicate the simplicity of the ten commandments when they were created.

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