DEKALOG (Kieslowski, 1988)
Criterion Collection, Blu-ray, Release Date Sep 27, 2016
Review by Christopher S. Long
Considering its hallowed art-house
reputation, first-time viewers of Krzysztof Kieslowski's “Dekalog”
(1988) might be surprised to discover how much of its content is the
stuff of daytime soap operas: secret affairs, medical crises and
miracles, questions of dubious parentage, and shocking final twists
aplenty. Though this ten-part television series (and its two
feature-length film versions) is set almost entirely at the same
undistinguished working-class Warsaw housing complex, the stories of
its inhabitants are hardly quotidian portraits. Each thin slice of
life is served with a heaping portion of monumental metaphysical
melodrama, with life and death often as the immediate stakes, and
love standing equidistant between both poits. Kieslowski claimed that
several Polish critics complained about the series' lack of realism –
perhaps he was too polite to point that a similar approach worked
well enough for Dostoevsky.
The complaints were swiftly drowned out
by a global chorus of critical hosannas, setting the relatively
obscure Kieslowski on the path to international art-house stardom, a
reputation he would definitively secure with “The Double Life of
Veronique” (1991) and the “Three Colors” Trilogy (1993-1994)
before his death in 1996 following a heart attack at the age of 54.
“Dekalog” took some time before making its way to audiences
around the world, but for a series intended primarily for Polish
television, its reach and impact were nothing short of remarkable.
According to Kieslowski, the project
originated when his friend, a lawyer and writer named Krzysztof
Piesiewicz, suggested he make a film about The Ten Commandments and
their relevance (if any) to late-Communist Poland. After toying with
the idea for a while, they decided to shoot ten hour-long films, each
co-scripted by Kieslowski and Piesiewicz, with the original premise
turning out be a very, very loose guide (and perhaps an impediment to
critical interpretation) as they further explored the characters,
stories, and settings. Each episode is identified only by a number
(One, Two, etc.), though episodes Five and Six would be expanded into
the theatrical features “A Short Film About Killing” and “A
Short Film About Love.”
Most episodes feature the gray,
weathered stone towers of the housing complex looming in the
background, sometimes blotting out the reluctant sun, and focus on
two or three of the community's inhabitants. In “Dekalog: One” a
father raises his precocious son to revere science while the boy's
aunt schools him in spiritual matters with events leaving both adults
to question the certainty underpinning their world views. In
“Dekalog: Three” a man's unstable former lover connives to force
him to spend Christmas Eve with her instead of with his family.
“Dekalog: Nine” relates the struggles of a married couple to come
to terms with the husband's recent diagnosis of incurable impotence.
Those relatively tame summaries fail to
do justice to some of the series' more lurid plot elements: a brief
moment of humiliation prompts an immediate suicide attempt; a woman
pregnant by another man needs to know if her cancer-stricken husband
will survive so she can decide whether or not to have an abortion;
and if you're looking for incest, Kieslowski's got that covered too.
Maybe there's something in the water supply at this not-so-humble
little complex.
“Five” and “Six” have generally
drawn the most attention, in no small part because each was also
released as a longer theatrical feature (with about an extra half
hour of footage each). “Five” details a brutal, senseless murder,
or perhaps two equally brutal, senseless murders depending on your
feelings about capital punishment. “Six” relates the story of a
teenage boy who spies on his older, sexy neighbor and the queasy
transition from criminal stalking to (perhaps) an actual
relationship.
“Five” is a masterpiece, with the
prolonged murder scene (even more excruciatingly drawn out in the
feature version) difficult to shake off, but the moment in this
ambitious series that stands out the most for me is one of the more
uncharacteristically quiet ones. “Dekalog: Eight” begins with an
older woman out jogging, greeting a neighbor with pleasant
banalities, then cleaning up the plain apartment where she lives
alone. She hops in her car, parks in a nondescript spot, and then
walks into a nondescript building. As she strides calmly down a
corridor, first one and then several younger people stand up to greet
her with obvious respect, and a crisp “Good morning, professor!”
fills in the final crucial piece of the puzzle. Bit by bit,
Kieslowski layers details onto this character, radically transforming
our perception of her in the space of a few simple scenes, from blank
slate to everyday homebody to prestigious professor of ethics.
Modest moments like this, more than its
numerous melodramatic eruptions, explain the enduring appeal of the
ambitious “Dekalog.” Characters from earlier (or later) episodes
crop up in the background or even occasionally in the foreground of
other stories, and they may be even more compelling when we only
catch a brief glimpse of them than when we focus on them for a full
hour – what have they been up to since last we met? Locations such
as a cramped, rickety elevator play important roles in multiple
episodes as well, and a series of repeated motifs link the various
actions and characters: spilled liquids, phone calls just barely
missed, soulful closeups, an unidentified “watchful” character
who crops up in eight of the episodes, and mirrors aplenty. Zbigniew
Preisner's evocative, eclectic score also unifies the series, quietly
underscoring multiple tones. (Ed. Note: Yes, that was written by
someone who wants to say something about the music, which is
obviously very important to the series, but doesn't actually know
much about music.)
The episodes are almost relentlessly
morbid with rare light-hearted moments serving primarily to emphasize
the tragedy that inevitably follows. With the drab architecture,
miserable weather, and the array of downcast glances and slumped
shoulders, the exhausted viewer plowing through the end of “Dekalog:
Nine” might anticipate a final installment featurng nothing but a
series of slow-motion shots of the complex's inhabitants jumping out
of their windows and splattering in unison in the courtyard until
their desaturated geysers of blood completely envelop the camera
lens.
That's what makes “Dekalog: Ten”
such a surprise and probably my favorite installment, as Kieslowski
and Piesiewicz punctuate the gloom with a sharply comic note. An
older stamp collector seen briefly in “Eight” passes away (that's
not the funny part) and leaves his collection to his two adult sons,
the younger of whom is a punk rocker who implores his audience to
“Kill! Kill! Kill and fornicate! Beat your mother and your father!”
That's one of the funny parts. The hapless brothers quickly learn
that take-no-prisoners capitalism is very much alive in Communist
Poland in the form of a rabid Warsaw stamp collecting community that
intends to get its hands on the greatest collection in the country at
any cost. The boys think they have have some clever plans of their
own, but are faced with the inescapable truth that philately will get
you nowhere.
“Five” plunged us into the depths
of late-Bresson pessimism and “Ten” emerges in the land of
Kaurismakian dry irony. Would “Dekalog: Eleven” have been a
musical?
Video:
The episodes are presented in their
original broadcast aspect ratios, either 1.33:1 or 1.70:1. The two
feature films (and their TV versions) are presented in 1.70:1 ratios.
Kieslowski worked with nine different cinematographers on the series,
producing a variety of visual styles, some episodes with more camera
movement than others, and some with particularly heavy use of color
filters. “Five” (and its feature-version) employs an odd
technique with the edges of the frame darkened in a circular cut-out
pattern in several scenes.
“Dekalog” was released on Blu-ray
in Europe in 2015 on a set which has received some criticism for its
technical qualities. I don't own that release, but I find it
difficult to believe similar complaints will be raised against this
remarkable four-disc set from Criterion. Actually, I'm sure someone
will have a complaint about something (color timing, likely) as is
the case when a film is converted from PAL to NTSC. With the varying
visual styles across thirteen hours of total material, it's difficult
to assess how true to the original source (ten TV episodes, two
feature films) this 1080p image is, but what's easier to say is that
it looks great. Criterion also informs us that the transfers were
“approved by the respective cinematographers when possible” and
this new restoration by TVP was conducted “in 4K resolution from
the original 35 mm camera negatives.”
When I say it looks great, I mean that
it doesn't look too great. Though the visual styles are complex,
“Dekalog” isn't meant to be the sensual treat that much
Kieslowski's “Three Colors” trilogy is. Along with the colored
filters, much of the footage looks drab, overcast, and appropriately
gloomy, and all in exquisite high-def detail.
Audio:
The films receive linear PCM Mono audio
mixes. The restored lossless audio sounds flawless, of course, and is
most appreciated in bringing out the subtleties in Preisner's
pervasive score. Optional English subtitles support the Polish audio.
Extras:
Discs One and Two contain five
“Dekalog” episodes apiece, and nothing else. One note: Each time
you select an episode, you'll get another pop-up menu with a blurb
summarizing the plot, almost always with information that doesn't
become apparent until well into each episode. If you worry about that
sort of thing, don't read the pop-up blurbs.
Disc Three includes the two feature
films produced from this series, “A Short Film About Killing” (86
min.) and “A Short Film About Love” (88 min.) along with five
minutes worth of trailers.
Disc Four is devoted exclusively to
extra features and there's plenty to talk about.
First up is a collection of
Kieslowski-centered extras, starting with a brief (3 min.) interview
of the director conducted on the set of “Dekalog.” More
substantive is “A Short Film About 'Dekalog'” (20 min.) which
consists of excerpts from a January 1995 interview with Kieslowski
conducted by film students Eileen Anipare and Jason Wood of the
University of North London. Kieslowski discusses the film's modest
budget (allegedly $100,000 for the entire series, but that's tough to
believe) while explaining some of the reasoning behind the series as
well as the series' reception in Poland. Great stuff here. Finally,
we get audio excerpts (23 min.) from Kieslowski's 1990 appearance at
the National Film Theatre in London, interview conducted by critic
Derek Malcolm.
Critic Annette Insdorf, author of
“Double Lives, Double Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski,”
holds court (28 min.) on the intricacies of the sprawling “Dekalog”
series, beginning with the contention that Kieslowski was one of the
masters of using the physical to explore the metaphysical. I was
particularly interested in her comparison of the published “Dekalog”
screenplays to the actual films – Kieslowski consistently cut out
information to render events more ambiguous than how they were
written.
The next cluster is a series of “Cast
and Crew” interviews. Three of them were conducted back in 2003,
including interviews with writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz (25 min.),
cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (“Five/A Short Film About Killing”
- 3 min.) and a montage of interviews with Thirteen Actors from the
series (21 min.) The final three were recorded in 2016 by Criterion,
and include interviews with heroic editor Ewa Smal (15 min.), and
cinematographers Wieslaw Zdort (“One” - 15 min.) and Witold
Adamek (“Six” - 12 min.) Of them all, I found Smal's interview by
far the most interesting. Piesiewicz was surprisingly reluctant to
provide much insight.
Finally, the disc includes an interview
with Hanna Krall (2016, 16 min.), a Polish journalist and “creative
confidante” of Kieslowski's. She notes that she and Kieslowski
shared a belief that '80s Poland was a “dull world” and that both
feared the dullness would seep into their work.
Sandwiched in between the fold-out case
that includes the fours discs is a thick square-bound insert booklet
(72 pages) which begins with a lengthy analytical overview of the
series by film studies professor Paul Coates and includes shorter
essays about each episode also by Coates. We also get lengthy
excerpts from published 1991-1992 interviews with Kieslowski and
shorter essays by Kieslowski about the two feature films of
“Dekalog.”
Final Thoughts:
Twelve and a half hours of films plus
three hours of extras. It's almost like Criterion felt they had to
wait until the binge-watching era was in full swing before releasing
Kieslowski's sprawling opus. Though “Dekalog” has been released
on DVD previously, this Blu-ray upgrade is easily the definitive
version of one of the most influential film and/or television
projects of the last thirty years. So binge away.
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