CHARMED BY KIEŚLOWSKI AT CAMERIMAGE

Friday October 14th, 2016

Camerimage and TV Kino Polska invite you to a series of events dedicated to Krzysztof Kieślowski. Experience his art anew twenty years after his death, with numerous filmmakers who had a chance to work with him reminiscing the director's career.

You will also be able to rediscover The Decalogue, as we will present this masterpiece in its entirety.

More details about the Charmed by Kieślowski project to follow soon. You are more than welcome to join the series of events celebrating the director's art

If you ever wondered how The Decalogue came to existence, read this wonderful essay by the professor Marek Lis.

SOMEONE SHOULD MAKE A FILM ABOUT THE TEN COMMANDMENTS...

The idea was originally Krzysztof Piesiewicz’s, a lawyer who had already worked with Kieślowski as the co-author of the screenplay for No End (1984): ‘Someone should make a film about the Ten Commandments. You should to it.’ Kieślowski says in his autobiography Kieslowski on Kieslowski, edited by Danuta Stok, that he defended himself against this idea, but realised that, in the face of the chaos, disorder, tension, and the feelings of hopelessness people have, such questions should be fundamental. The director, having accepted Piesiewicz’s concept, planned to make the films so as not to illustrate the commandments – they were only supposed to be inspiration. ‘The Decalogue is an attempt to narrate ten stories about ten or twenty individuals, who – caught in a struggle precisely because of these and not other circumstances, circumstances which are fictitious but which could occur in every life – suddenly realise that they are going round and round in circles.’

Still from "The Decalogue I"

The concept of The Decalogue ripened, took on an artistic and cinematographic shape, and soon they were trying to break through the industry’s barrier of indifference and the difficulties connected, among others, with financing the project. Krzysztof Zanussi, the director of the Tor Production House that produced The Decalogue, recalled after 25 years that the project was not a success at first: nobody wanted these films. The prospect of presenting a universal theme convinced Telewizja Polska, but when eight episodes were filmed it turned out that the budget had run out and that nothing was left to finance the remaining episodes. The TV producer asked, ‘Aren’t you overdoing it? Do you really have to make ten parts? Maybe eight will be enough.’ The production was saved quite accidently by a producer from Berlin who was not very interested in the film’s theme, but who took a risk and decided to invest his money. Spending a relatively small sum on The Decalogue turned out to be the best investment he had ever made.

Still from "The Decalogue II"

At first Kieślowski planned to hand over the direction of the ten films written by himself and Piesiewicz, which are based on their own experiences, to ten young directors, but eventually he directed them himself, although the cameramen were different. The characters of the different parts of the cycle are people who all live in a Warsaw housing estate in the late 1980s, sometimes passing each other in a doorway, meeting in the lift or in the hall, or looking at each other out of windows. Although each of the almost one-hour films is a separate and complete unit, they are linked anyway: the most noticeable form of which is the silent man played by Artur Barciś. The main characters from different parts also appear briefly in other parts: Krzysztof from the first part appears in the third; the married couple from the second part appears in the fifth (and the eighth); the taxi driver from the fifth appears in the fourth. In the tenth part, Tomek from the sixth part appears (he meets Roman from The Decalogue, Nine), and the stamp collector from the last part is also in the eighth film of the cycle. Two of The Decalogue parts – the fifth and the sixth – were released in expanded versions as feature films (A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love) that significantly differ from their television counterparts. The reading of the published TheDecalogue screenplays is also inspiring: there are, for example, plots that are not included in the final version of the films, different endings, and sequences of events that are different. The actors, such as Maja Komorowska in the role of the religious aunt in the first film, contributed their sensibility to the cycle. In the films, autobiographical elements of the director can be found: his spiritual and religious doubts and searching are expressed by Krzysztof in the first film and Zofia in the eighth.

Still from "The Decalogue III"

It is worth mentioning that The Decalogue is not a series (meaning a drama unit that is a collection of episodes in which a closed group of characters features) but a cycle, which – as Adam Garbicz explains in the Encyclopaedia of Cinema – does not form a continuous fictional story but that consists of films devoted to different themes. Thus, The Decalogue does not only have to be watched from the first part to the last, but also randomly, revealing the well-thought-out relations between the elements of the cycle.

A key to The Decalogue?

Soon after the premiere of The Decalogue, Tadeusz Sobolewski wrote that the seemingly small role of the silent man (played by Artur Barciś) is exceptionally important: ‘To understand him means to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the whole The Decalogue.’ A slim, fair-haired ‘young man’ (as he is described in the screenplays) takes on a different figure in every film: he seems to be a homeless man, an orderly, a tram driver, an oarsman, a worker and a painter, a wondering traveller, a man with crutches, a student, and a lost biker. He appears briefly at crucial moments of the stories; he observes the characters, sometimes unnoticed by them. He is not in the tenth part – or maybe we simply cannot see him? This intriguing figure, whose gaze into the viewers’ eyes opens the cycle, has been interpreted in many different ways. He has been perceived, among others, as a personification of inevitable fate, the conscience, the Angel of Death portending misfortune or Destiny, and even God himself. When asked about this in Kieslowski on Kieslowski, the director does not provide an understanding of the character: ‘There is this guy who wanders around in all the films. I do not know who he is, just a guy who comes and watches. He watches us, our lives. And he is not very pleased with us. He comes, watches, and walks on.’ However, in an interview for Kino magazine after the premiere, Artur Barciś admitted, ‘I know what is going to happen soon. I know that because I am not human.’

Still from "The Decalogue V"

Joseph G. Kickasola named the character linking all the episodes Theophanes, meaning ‘Appearances of God’. Theophanes is a reference to Andrei Rublev (1966) by Andrei Tarkovsky, in which a character who bears the same name emerges, moving like a spirit and appearing to know more than most other mortals. Theophanes is not God, but ‘he references him like an icon, materially bearing his presence and eternal gaze’, even bearing some of God’s traits: mysterious knowledge and omnipresence.

‘God’s look’ is performed in the first episode through tears, which is perhaps related to the condition of humanity. In The Decalogue, Two, after the diagnosis (progressing, we find out about the cancer) a miracle occurs that is confirmed by the silent presence of Theophanes; he – and God – sees the transformation of Dorota, and his thoughtful look follows Dorota’s words to her dying husband: ‘I love you very much.’ In The Decalogue, Five, Theophanes appears as a worker to warn Jacek with his gaze, and again, as a worker carrying a ladder, watching him going to the death cell. The most unusual is the way in which this character is filmed in the eighth episode: the place in which a student wearing a blue sweater sits when Elżbieta accuses God and Zofia of a lack of mercy is empty in the preceding and the following scenes. He is physically absent, only becoming visible for some.

Still from "The Decalogue VI"

The Decalogue turned out to be the breakthrough in Kieślowski’s career: until then he had only been a local director, but these movies opened the way to an international audience for him and he soon became the subject of many foreign reviews and publications. A Short Film About Killing won, among others, the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize as well as the first European Film Award; A Short Film About Love and The Decalogue were highly acclaimed at the festivals in São Paulo and San Sebastian, among others. The Decalogue is the only Polish film that was included in the so-called ‘Vatican film list’, which consists of 45 films, compiled on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of cinema, recommended by the Pontifical Council for Social Communication and the Vatican Film Library. Ingmar Bergman considered The Decalogue to be one of the five movies most important to him. Kieślowski made his next films abroad – in France and Switzerland – and his works, discovered slowly, became the inspiration for other film-makers.

Still from "The Decalogue VII"

25 years after The Decalogue premiered, Krzysztof Zanussi, Kieślowski’s friend, wrote quite sadly that ‘The success came too late! Krzysztof became famous in the moment he did not need it. He was happy to have opportunities he had not had before, but he said that he would not believe in admiration. His life was not a sequence of success; it was a great drama with burdens he carried till the end and that is why he made a gesture we resented him for: he decided to retire from film-making. It was his defiance.’

Marek Lis, professor of the Theological Faculty

at Opole University (Poland)
TVP promotional materials - The Decalogue