In class we watched two episodes of Decalogue, specifically episodes 1 and 5. The first decalogue, titled "I am the Lord they God; thou shalt have no other gods before Me" is about a father named Krzysztof and his son Pawel. Krzysztof is a computer enthusiast and professor who shares his love of machinery and computers with Pawel. Although he was raised in the Catholic faith, Krzysztof has a very matter-of-fact view on the world and this is apparent in how he consoles Pawel after he finds a dead dog in the snow. This faith in the concrete and visible is explored throughout the episode as Pawel becomes more and more interested in what the ideas of death and God truly mean. In these discussions, ideas of the abstract and divine clash with the factual and scientific. The first instance of this clash is when Pawel asks Krzysztof about what being dead means. While Krzysztof answers matter-of-fact and scientifically, Pawel keeps asking what being dead means, implying a desire to know deeper meanings and more abstract understandings. This instance ties into the religious concept of midrash, which incorporates different levels of meanings. In midrash, deep and personal meanings are identified. In this scene, Pawel tries to identify the deeper and personal meanings, but is blocked by his well-meaning father.
Krzysztof instills in Pawel a strong dependence on machinery, computers, and the calculable. However, in the course of the episode the focus shifts from how computers are godlike to how they fall short of living up to godlike expectations. When Pawel falls into a frozen lake that Krzysztof calculated to be safe, the title of the episode became more and more clear. This episode reflects God's first commandment because when Krzysztof rejected God and Catholicism at a young age he began to revere computers and machines in their place. Then, when machines fail him, he has nowhere to turn but to God. However, this turn is not one that is filled with grace, but with malice. Krzysztof destroys a small altar in front of a Madonna painting and the destruction makes the image of Mary appear to be crying. This emotionally charged image creates a lot of questions: Is Mary crying because of Krzysztof's anger, Pawels death, or maybe both? Does Krzysztof blame God for his misfortunes?
The second episode, "Thou shalt not kill," had a more obvious connection to its title. The episode centers around two men; one, a young man who commits a premeditated murder, and the second, the man who acts as his lawyer. This episode contains a lot of contrasting images and dialogue. One example is how at the beginning of the episode the lawyer is talking about how the law should "improve nature" or make humanity better, yet later in the episode he defends a murderer. Another example is all of the symbolic imagery that occurs before the man commits the murder: on the taxi ride to the murder location the taxi passes a statue of a saint and a group of young schoolchildren (implying innocence) and then pass by smokestacks and dying grass (the ugliness of the location denotes the ugliness of the heart, in this case).
This episode left me with a lot of questions, many of which center around the idea of hypocrisy in the two main characters. The murderer receives a kind of poetic justice in the episode by dying the same way he murdered the taxi driver, but is that truly justice? Is killing killers a way to show that killing is wrong? The lawyer emphasizes the power of the law to promote goodness and fairness, but how is defending someone who is guilty an example of goodness?
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