Caitlin Murphy- Decalogue

The two episodes of the Decalogue that we focused on were commandment 1: “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange gods before Me” and commandment 5: "Thou shall not kill". Episode one was an emotional piece between the bond of father and son and the underlining conflict of religious differences. The son desperately wanted to know more about what happens after you die, coming from curiosity of his aunt's (the father's sister) discussion. The son's father had little to no religious faith, and believed fully on science, math, and technology. Throughout the film, we watch as the son juggles between his love for technology and his curiosity for religion. After a tragic skating accident in melting ice, the son falls into the lake and sadly dies. We watch as the father completely shuts down with sadness and despair and even begins to blame himself for his son's death because of his miscalculation in how deep the ice would be. This is when we begin to see the father begin to distrust technology and we see a small spark of interest in faith that is quickly destroyed with more anger. The symbols of tears show up many times during the episode, starting with a frame of the aunt watching her deceased nephew in a tv commercial for milk, then with the "homeless" man staring the fire,  with the father's single tear while he watches his dead son be lifted from the bottom of the lake, and then lastly, the biggest symbolic representation of tears, is the candle wax falling from the Mother of God's eye. These tears show the pain and suffering in our world, yet also show vulnerability and a subtle cry for help to the higher being. Midrash, a focus on deep, comparative, or secretive meaning, is shown in the episode by the contrast of "higher power" between religion and technology. The father shows little to no emotion throughout the entirety of the film, until tragedy occurs, which he involuntarily passed down to his son, when we see him show no emotion when he passes by the dead and frozen dog. 

In episode 5, we see a much more hostile group of characters. Even though the setting was quite dreary in episode 1, episode 5 puts off a very negative feeling. The taxi driver seems to lack morals as he cat calls women, drops clients from having rides after waiting their turn, and purposely scaring dogs walking passed by blaring the horn, making one dog actually run away. Next we see a mysterious, rebel 20 year old boy who rarely speaks, keeps to himself, and shows no emotion. Both of these characters seem to find joy in bringing pain to others lives. About half way through the episode, the young man gets a ride from the taxi driver and ends up choking, murdering, and robbing him. The taxi driver and young man have no connection to each other, the young man just needed to kill someone, and it did not matter who. I find it interesting that the two of them ended up connecting in such a gruesome way, considering they are quite similar. The young man is sent to life is prison without parole and sentenced the death penalty. The act of killing the killer has always been an argument across America, and has even been resigned from the law for sometime, because of its hypocritical tendency. Should someone be killed because they killed someone? Is it a form of punishment to scare other potential murderers from killing? Or is it for economic reasons in the prison? We do not know the exact reason behind the death penalty, but we see a very graphic representation of it at the end of the film. 
Before the young man is killed by the prison system, he talks to his lawyer (a new lawyer at that) about his wishes for after he passes. He would like to take the last spot in the grave where is father and younger sister are buried, which was left open for his mother. I became quite disappointed when I heard this, because as soon as he started to show vulnerability, he became a selfish human again by taking his mother's plot. He then goes into detail about how his sister passes, and begins to open up about how the person who ran over his sister was actually his friend who he was drinking with just before the accident. Things finally begin to make sense as to why he had so much anger built up and what caused him to kill someone. The guilt of being a part of his favorite sibling's death ate him alive to the point of killing others. Although this story is incredibly dark, there are forms of love that shine through. There is love shown between the lawyer and young man, when the lawyer calls out his name after the sentencing almost in a way of hopelessness and apology. There is also love shown between the criminal and his deceased sister. Although love was only shown a couple times in this episode, it was more prevalent than ever because of the lack of positivity during the rest of the episode.