All of the films in The Decalogue are easy and pleasurable to follow as stories, yet part of the excitement they generate stems from discussions about their meaning after their dramatic impact registers.
Far from being morality tales, these short stories are closer to parables — at least, they are as confounding and strange as Jesus' parables were to his first hearers.
Most of the films put characters into situations in which they cannot obey one commandment without breaking others. Challenges you to figure out how to be a moral person in a world with no easy answers.
Kieslowski gives cinematic voice to ethical problems in a way that perhaps no other director does. These films are bleak, somber, downbeat in theme, but pose problems we need to think about.
The Decalogue finds Kieslowski and co-scenarist Krzysztof Piesiewicz turning a delicate cycle of intimate, funny, heartbreaking, and compassionate works into a symphony of human fallibility.
Epic! It's well worth the time commitment to watch these modern envisionments of the ten commandments. These interpretations are rife with ethical ambiguity, forcing the viewer to question and analyze their moral assumptions.
Decalogue I - 5/5Decalogue II - 4/5Decalogue III - 4/5Decalogue IV - Decalogue V - 4/5Decalogue VI - 3.5/5Decalogue VII -Decalogue VIII - Decalogue IX - Decalogue X -
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