- Duration:
53’
- Genre:
DRAMA
- Resolution: HD
- Year: 1988
This
original series illustrating the Ten Commandments has firmly established
Kieślowski’s international reputation. Each of the presented stories is linked
to the theme of a particular commandment. Because of its form, all viewers are
deeply moved by these movies, regardless of their views or religious beliefs.
Asked on numerous occasions why he had chosen such a hard subject, the director
replied curtly: “It’s worthwhile to be reminded of these ten very well written
sentences. There needs to be a point of reference, a definitive criterion
(...)”. The series won numerous awards at film festivals and is one of the most
recognizable Polish productions.
‘Is it
possible to steal a man?’ – it turns out it is. Majka, a student, runs away
from home, abducting her 6-year-old daughter Ania, the fruit of her romance with
her former teacher. To avoid the scandal, the girl was adopted by her
grandmother who deprived Majka of her right to be a parent. Too impossible to
be true? Not really. In Krzysztof Piesiewicz’s legal practice, he saw an even
more dramatic case as it was connected with incest. A child asking whether she
still has a mother becomes a victim of a long-term misunderstanding, inability
to love, growing grievance and hate, like other children in Kieślowski’s cycle.
Somewhere in the background, there are fathers – Majka’s and Ania’s, as guilty
as the others, but silent and absent, running away from responsibility. In the
seventh part of the cycle, even a man played by Artur Barciś is helpless. In the
earlier episodes, he influences the main characters by looking at them in crucial
moments. Here he impersonates a man leaning on crutches at the railway station
in Józefów on Sunday morning, who gets out of the train to which Majka jumps
into running away from her parents and leaving confused Ania. Does a man with
crutches seen from a distance arrive too late to reduce aggression between two
women that has been lasting for years? Kieślowski consistently lets his characters
appear in different episodes: in The Decalogue, Nine, Ania plays alone
at the playground and is watched from the window by the doctor, considering with
his wife an adoption of a child. Inside, behind another window, one of many
similar windows in the same block of flats, another drama unfolds.