Discussing
Discussing Kieslowski's Decalogue V

Think Christian's Josh Larsen and Reel Spirituality's Elijah Davidson watch and discuss Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Decalogue one film at a time.

I think you're spot on, Josh, in your interpretation of this film. New Testament "grace" is colloquially framed as "undeserved favor," and if there is anything Decalogue V affirms beyond the inhumanity of capital punishment, it's that no one is innocent. All are culpable to some degree. We ought to all show each other grace.

The film goes to great lengths to show us how wretched a person the taxi driver is, and we're reminded how the jury had reached a decision even before they heard the case. The judge admits he doesn't agree with capital punishment even though he sentenced the youth to die, and even our noble, morally outraged defender admits some responsibility for the murder, as he had a chance to stop it and did not. The argument is even made by the film's appearance. In addition to the mirror motif (which I also found engaging and effective), cinematographer Slawomir Idziak dirties the whole world. It's as if there's filth smeared across the camera lens. "No one is righteous," so how dare anyone exact such absolute punishment on another, the film asks.

I think Kieslowski is being strident, but sometimes—and I realize I'm igniting a different discussion by stating this, but I think it's the discussion Kieslowski wants us to have—a grating sound is necessary to break through the noise buffering us from recognizing the danger we're in. The indifference of capital punishment, and, perhaps, the Mosaic Law, is terrible. Maybe we need a fire alarm of a film to alert us to this fact. For what it's worth, Decalogue V and the longer film fashioned from it, A Short Film About Killing, premiered at a time when Poland was in the middle of a nation-wide debate about capital punishment. They decided to abolish the practice that same year, and some credit Kieslowski's film as instrumental in that abolishment. Personally, I applaud that decision. Like the lawyer in the film, I abhor capital punishment.

However, I must also admit that abhorring capital punishment puts me at odds with Exodus, which, a chapter after it forbids murder, prescribes capital punishment for murder and for what appear to me to be much lesser crimes, such as merely cursing one's father or mother. Exodus seems to think that murder and capital punishment are different—the former counters justice and the later upholds it—so I can understand where proponents of capital punishment are coming from even if I disagree with them.

There is a way to understand the Biblical witness as just that, a witness to humanity's understanding of the one God through time. So, in exile, when the Israelites were in need of a communal charter to govern their society, God gave them a societal framework, the Mosaic Law. However, that Law was unyielding and impossible to follow. It, justly, condemns all. The prophets were the fire alarms of their day, trying, most often in vain, to alert the people to the danger they were in because of the Law.

Then, Christ appears and redefines our relationship with the Law. Christ adds grace to the mix and doesn't condemn even when condemnation is warranted. The writings of Paul and the Apostles represent the further working-out of grace. They are trying to get to that grace-filled land to which Christ pointed and made a way. It is our responsibility to continue that trajectory. In the case of capital punishment, I think, as Kieslowski seems to think, that means abolishing it in light of our communal culpability and the proven ineffectiveness of the practice as a deterrent to other crime. In my view, the way of grace demands it. Feel free to disagree.

Thanks for the background info on the capital punishment debate going on in Poland at the time of the film's release, Elijah. Helpful stuff. And I'm glad you highlighted the smeary cinematography. Throughout these films, it's been interesting to observe how the weather plays a part (mostly, it's been wintry and dreary). Here, I felt like the entire story took place a few weeks after a snow storm, when the snow from above has mixed with the dirt below to create a dismal smudge, one that dirties everything from the taxi driver's car to, as you note, the camera lens.

Going back to your focus on capital punishment itself (something we've recently considered at TC), I would say this is one of the most wrenching depictions of an execution I've seen, from the details of the preparation (including a tray that is set beneath the noose to catch bodily fluids) to the act itself. Despite all the formalities, things devolve into frantic chaos when the time comes to put the rope around Jacek’s neck, as shame fills the room like a noxious gas and everyone wants to be done with the business as quickly as possible. Few films on the topic - Dead Man Walking and Dancer in the Dark are others that come to mind - have been this harrowing.

I think an interesting companion piece to this film is Herzog's Into the Abyss. Both films are coming from a similar place, and both are effective in casting serious doubt as to the morality of capital punishment.
I really liked the cinematography in this film. I didn't think of it so much as indicating the whole world is dirtied, as Elijah suggests, but more that none us are able to see people and their actions clearly. We really have little idea who Jacek is, and why he does what he does. There is ostensibly more clarity in the law, but even that is confounding and unconvincing.
There was an early scene where a little girl is sitting in some courtyard getting her picture drawn. We get a brief shot from her perspective looking at Jacek. That is clear, and doesn't have the iris effect/exaggerated vignette that most of the other shots have. That might just be a result of the transfer, but it seemed to reflect something about the innocence of youth that no one else in the film, even the film itself, has.

Good eye, Jeremy. There were a handful of shots of little kids in the first half of the film, in fact. I like your reading - a reference to the "innocence" of youth - and I also thought these moments hinted that there was more to Jacek than his antisocial behavior. He has the photo of the girl in the communion dress (which we later learn is his sister) and that key moment when he warmly smiles at a pair of little girls peering into the window of a cake shop and teasingly flings some frosting at them.

The film is also "clear-eyed" during the execution. There's no filter here. Kieslowski wants us to face the terribleness of it full on. This really is an excellent film, the most beautiful "ugly" film I've ever seen, I think.

Our Watcher makes another couple of appearances here as well, and his gaze is the most explicit yet, I think. The first time, he's holding the survey rod and shakes his head foreboding at Jacek. The second time he's carrying a ladder through the prison and pauses momentarily to gaze, not at a character, but at us. In this installment, the Watcher is a moral "voice," and he eventually implicates us in Jacek's death. Or at least that's how I saw it. What do y'all think?

My local library didn't have a copy of the two middle disks of this series and the episode has been removed from YouTube. I was so dedicated to watching this on time that I played around with a sketchy download of a subtitle reader so I could understand the Polish version of this episode's expanded format, A Short Film About Killing. All on Canadian Thanksgiving, clearly the perfect film for that occasion.

And yet when the time came to contribute to the discussion, I had nothing to add. When the film ended, I had curled up in bed and turned off the light, numbed by evil. Terrence Malick's debut Badlands had a similar effect, but then there were images of nature interspersed. This time there is no such filter. Unflinching and banal, what can I say except "come, Lord Jesus, come?" (Thanks Josh for your insight into the need this picture paints). I felt like quoting an Old Testament prophet; Kieslowski has become here more than ever a seer to his amoral country.

Josh, in your last comment you mentioned the playful scene of Jacek tossing icing at the girls in the cafe. When I first saw that scene I skipped back to verify what that rusty coloured material was. It looked at first like blood staining even the innocence of these kids.

Elijah, I think you hit on what the Watcher most regularly represents - the conscience of both the characters and us the viewers. Remember how he carried the canoe on his shoulders as he stared into Anka's eyes when she contemplated opening the letter? Or how he stared into our eyes as he waited by the frozen pond in episode 1, as to ask us what the consequences of our idols might be? But if this is the case, who is he in episodes 2 and 3?

Thanks for your dedication, Daniel! I wish I had an answer for you in regards to the function of the Watcher in II and III, but I'm still mulling over what that might be (beyond the conscience/accuser role we've discussed). Maybe that's simply it, as well as a way to remind viewers that these people, stories and moral dilemmas are all connected, taking place underneath the same omniscient gaze.

Love your idea of Kieslowski as an OT prophet, by the way. I think so many artists function that way, often unwittingly. (Standup comedians are among my favorites.)

Josh - three points on this interesting thread:
1 I saw the Polish film IDA the other day set in Soviet Poland ca 1962. A grey, shabby world, filmed in b/w, reminding me of Bela Tarr's films of Soviet Hungary, also in b/w, a vision of hopelessness (and in his TURIN HORSE running the seven days of creation backwards - how pessimistic is that?). Now DECALOGUE is not in b/w but it is in a washed-out, smeary (as Elijah says) colour, and reflects the shabbiness of mid-80s Warsaw, darkest before the dawn, when society (and not just Communist society) was marked, in Kieslowski's view, "by a failure in communal solidarity". This style is well fitted to the bleak eye-for-an-eye universe of DECALOGUE 5.
2 The DECALOGUE series makes me think of TS Eliot's poem 'East Coker' section 4: "The whole earth is our hospital/ endowed by the ruined millionaire." The bleak (physically and morally) landscape of Warsaw is the hospital and the ruined millionaire is God - and I think of the Watcher as God having to stand and observe the misbehaviour, sometimes catastrophic, of human beings.
3 In my book 'The New Filmgoer's Guide to God' I write about the complex ethics of DECALOGUE 5 (and the other episodes in the series) as compared to the simple revenge ethics of the Coens' version of TRUE GRIT. Kieslowski has spoken of his version of God as the OT one, a cruel God "who does not forgive", and yet in his last film THREE COLOURS:RED he is at pains to portray a rapprochement between the Judge (=God) and the rest of humanity. In other words his key to life may not be forgiveness but it is reconciliation.

Tim

Welcome, Tim. I can't believe Ida hasn't come up before this (unless I'm forgetting a reference in one of the other threads). Ida is one of my favorite films from this year (I wrote about it for TC here)and certainly has parallels to The Decalogue, both in setting and spirit.

I found it interesting the way the film contrasts Jacek's interactions with girls and the cab driver's. The former is recalled to innocence (which makes sense given the history we learn later). The latter is revealed as lecherous. Of course, this shades our emotional response to the murders. Maybe this is a little too on-the-nose. Maybe not.

This touches on something I've been reflecting on this week: Why does Kieslowski's strongly suggestive (if not outright explicit) symbolism/mirroring work for me when I reject it in most other films? Why do I accept his "stridency," to borrow a word, Josh, when I can't stand it in other films, regardless of whether I agree with the film or not?

I think it's because he envelops his cinematic sermonizing in considerable artistry. The bee in the cup in II is explicit in its meaning, but it's also a symbol I would have never thought of, and, as Colin pointed out in our discussion of II, it took considerable patience to film. Here, Jacek's response to young girls is subtle, and his motivation is only revealed later. The cab driver's response also only has real meaning in relation to Jacek's story. The symbolism, while explicit, is rich.

Jeremy, I thought about Into the Abyss while watching this too. Both films are pointed and yet allow room for the complexity of the situation surrounding each murderer, Abyss more so, perhaps.

Daniel, I echo Josh. I think you tried harder to watch this than I would have had I been in your position. I think your response, "Marana tha!" is the appropriate one, and though Kieslowski wasn't a Christian, I think V is evidence that his response to the killing in the world is similar.

Tim, I imagine Ida hasn't come up, because not enough people have seen it which is a shame. It's one of my favorite films of the year as well, and the Kieslowski influence is all over it. You can almost imagine it's story as one of the entires in this Decalogue series. (The Three Colors trilogy is one of my more embarrassing blindspots. I mean to correct it soon.)

It perhaps has been covered in your discussions of other Decalogue episodes, but if not it's worth saying that it is a favoured narrative strategy of Kieslowski to create sympathies and expectations which he then subverts. So - Jacek is horrible until he faces execution when we suddenly take his side. Ditto the voyeur in Short Film About Love. It is also true of the Judge in 3 Colours Red. And so on.

I feel somewhat late to the party, but it's been great to read through your discussion.

Is it just me or did there seem to be an element of "what if" to the story? Throughout the film, a number of characters often contemplate how the situation could have gone differently.

The killer wonders what would have happened if he were present on the day his sister died. What if the movie theater was open and the boy had seen a romantic film? What it the cab driver had picked up the fare before the boy? Would that have changed the situation at all?

In some ways, I wonder if Kieslowski is trying to convey the idea that while one has free will, it is not as unconditional as some might believe. Should that compel us to sympathize more with the boy? What about criminals in general? Not sure if there is much to this thought, but I figured I would throw it out there.

I like that, Wade. For me, those "what if" moments also signify that there is more to Jacek than his awful act. Just another way the film makes room for his full humanity.

That is a great, Wade. "'What if' moments" is a great way to phrase it. I think you're correct, that those moments are opportunities for things to turn out differently, and I think they give the film an extra air of tragedy. Both boy and driver are so close so often to avoiding this murder. For me, they also made the boy more inscrutable, because even though I learn a lot about his past and interests, I still don't know why he kills anyone, let alone that cab driver. The "what if" moments are like moments of random chance that further highlight the apparent randomness of his crime. As I write this and think about it some more, I also feel less sympathy for the boy. The murder he commits is senseless. That Kieslowski is able to engender sympathy in me for him by the end is amazing.