The Decalogues

I owe a lot to my brother for throwing open the world of books to me. In my childhood, I remember being surrounded by books - from a lot of different genres. I remember very clearly a recurring instance from my childhood. Every year, on my brother's birthday, one of my uncles would ask what he wanted as a gift. The answer was a constant. Books. I grew up thinking that Russian classics by Gorky and Dostoevsky was a legitimate birthday gift. My brother had also hoarded up a considerable collection of comics/children books: Tinkle, Champak (I didn't like that even as a kid), Chandamama and my favourite - Indrajal comics with the adventures of Phantom, Mandrake, Rip Kirby, Flash Gordon...

I remember vividly the great sense of anticipation and joy with which I used to come back home after every quarterly/half-yearly exam - the joy of spending a whole afternoon, lying down on the bed with my favourite comics for company was my idea of bliss. The anticipation would start building as soon as I left school on the last exam day. Nobody at home would ask me to study and those joyful afternoons remain in my memories - written with permanent marker ink.

I felt the same kind of anticipation and joy while watching 'The Decalogues'. Its a series of 10 films (each about an hour long) directed by Kryztoff Kieslowski. The films are in Polish with English sub-titles. They are loosely based on the Ten Commandments. They were made for Polish television and screened there for the first time. Initially, he had planned to have a different director for each of the ten films. But he fell in love with the stories and decided to direct them himself. The cinematographer changes in each film but Kieslowski - as the director - is a constant. I read about the Decalogues for the first time in an interview of Vishal Bharadwaj on rediff where he was talking about Omkara. He said that he decided to become a movie director after watching the Decalogues. I am an admirer of Vishal Bharadwaj's work. So, with netflix in hand, I decided to find out what the fuss was all about.

Here is a small Synopsis of each of the 10 movies as I see it.

Decalogue 1:It is about an agnostic father who believes that everything can be solved by reason. The father is a teacher and his 10 year old son is a genius at computers. It is about the implicit faith that the father has in science and consequently the blind faith that the child has in his father - and the consequences thereof.

Decalogue 2:It is about the moral dilemma of a pregnant woman whose husband is suffering from a terminal illness. She is carrying the child of another man. It deals with the interplay of emotions between the woman and the doctor treating her husband. The dilemma is: If the doctor assures her that her husband will live, she will abort the child; if the doctor assures her that her husband will die, she wants to keep the child

Decalogue 3:This is about the one-time mistress of a now-married taxi driver making him revisit the past by taking him on a ride in his taxi through the town.

Decalogue 4:This is about a daughter finding a letter from her dead mother, which plants doubts in her mind of her real father.

Decalogue 5:This is about a killer, his killing a cab-driver, his being captured and sentenced to an execution and about the lawyer who argues his case.

Decalogue 6:This is the original of 'Ek Choti Si love story' starring Manisha Koirala which I had seen the first day it was released.

Decalogue 7:This is about a woman who had a daughter when she was very young. The child is being brought up by the young woman's mother. The young woman and her child are therefore sisters in the eyes of the world. This is about the young woman's attempt to break out with her child.

Decalogue 8:This is about an elderly ethics teacher as she comes face to face with an incident from her past (in the form of a Jewish woman) and she has to revisit a decision that she took in the past

Decalogue 9:This is about a philandering doctor who has become impotent and becomes suspicious of his wife

Decalogue 10:This is about 2 brothers (long estranged) who come across an unusual inheritance and the way their life changes.

I have not done any justice to the depth of the movies by these very superficial synopses (I dont want to spoil things for anyone who will see these movies). I know the synopses are pretty bad but the films are magnificent. All of the stories take place in the same block of flats. Virtually every character is a resident here but there is almost no overlapping of stories. There is an observer like character who moves through each of these stories providing a common link. I have seen and re-seen (thats the best word to describe it) all of these movies. All are masterpieces which make you think, which make you want to see through them at least one more time - to be able to grasp every nuance in the story. The acting is excellent across the board and as I said, except for the observer, there are different actors in each of the 10 films. My personal favourites are Decalogues 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10. Really..Even 8 is good but I thought not as powerful as the other nine. And it involves a lot of viewing time. About 12 hours if you see it once. But to really appreciate the collection you need to see it more than once.
This collection should be made compulsory viewing for every first time director(wherever..Hollywood, Bollywood, Kollywood, Mollywood). The stories of the Decalogues are multi-layered and brilliant. Kieslowski is a Genius.

P.S. I saw 'Sillunnoru Kaadhal', a Tamil movie, the day after I saw the Decalogues. I couldn't bear to watch it for more than 30 minutes. That's what good movies do to you. It makes you lose all patience with trash.