The Decalogue (TV Mini Series) Dekalog, szesc (1989) User Reviews

'Dekalog': Part 6- Love and passion and the sanctity of love

[TheLittleSongbird · 10/10 · 11 February 2017]

'Dekalog' is a towering achievement and a televisual masterpiece that puts many feature films to shame, also pulling off a concept of great ambition brilliantly. Although a big admirer of Krzysztof Kieślowski (a gifted director taken from us too early), and who has yet to be disappointed by him, to me 'Dekalog' and 'Three Colours: Red' sees him at his best.

All of 'Dekalog's' episodes have so many great things, and it is an example of none of the lesser episodes being bad. This is testament to the high quality of 'Dekalog' as an overall whole and how brilliant the best episodes are. Along with Episodes 1, 4 and 5, Episode 6 is one of my favourites and simply magnificent in every way.

Every single one of 'Dekalog's' episodes are exceptionally well made. The production values in Episode 6 are as ever atmosphere-enhancing, beautiful and haunting to look at and fascinating. Many of the images are impossible to forget and have the ability to shock and move. The direction is quietly unobtrusive, intelligently paced and never too heavy, and the music is suitably intricate.

The themes and ideals are used to full potential, and the characters and their relationships and conflicts feel so real and emotionally resonant without being heavy-handed. Despite being based around one of the ten commandments, don't let that put you off, resemblance to religion is relatively scant.

Story-wise, it is one of 'Dekalog's' richest, it's creepy, it's poignant and thoughtful, deliberate but never dull. The themes of obsession, stalking, lust, and heartache are expertly explored. The characterisations and interactions are among 'Dekalog's' richest and compellingly real. The acting is superb as to be expected from both the two leads, again the complexity and nuances of the performances is to be admired.

Overall, one of the best 'Dekalog' episodes and a masterpiece. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Kieslowski shows that love causes anguish,misery,pain and sorrow !!!!!

[FilmCriticLalitRao · 10/10 · 24 February 2009]

In most of the films the treatment of love leaves a lot to be desired. This might be because it is always a challenge to effectively portray true feelings of love which might appeal to all kinds of viewers. This is the reason why an occult theme such as love should always be shown by taking into consideration concomitant themes such as desire, lust,sexuality and voyeurism.These sentiments are some of love's near cousins.This can help in making love stand apart from other secondary feelings."Dekalog:Dekalog,Szesc (#1.6)" is an excellent short film which gives us an idea about true love.Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski shows us how true love comes and makes sense in the life of a person for whom love means nothing.The puzzling thing is that this is a case of an unusual love story involving a young boy and a woman who is older than her.This theme might appear as a bit hackneyed due to the fact that a lot of elements have been copied from American cinema but nevertheless the overall content of the film is original.A great film for all those who believe that love can only be felt and cannot be shown.

A story is based on the eye's fictitious power

[Aquilant · 10/10 · 7 April 2005]

This story is based on the EYE'S FICTITIOUS POWER, meant as a subtle and perverse kind of interference with our personal lives in the name of aims in clear contrast with every rules for civil living. Intended as a strict and precarious consequence of the obvious impossibility of coming to terms with one's own frustrated ambition, subjected to under-valuate the human interrelations dynamics. Acting as a comforting heaven-sent shelter from the dangers of the main character's hermetically sealed world, as an ambiguous way to take up a defensive position and give vent to the increased capability of the faculty of sight artfully increased at other people's expenses, whose privacy is being violated in their own homes.

The Dekalog 6, "Thou shalt not commit adultery", a shorter version of "A Short Film About Love", rotates around the barycenter of Tomek's room, a world apart from where he looks around epistemologically in search of some contiguous reality analyzed under his anomalous point of view, purified of all normal human contacts, always focused on Magda, his "bright" object of desire, incapable of facing her with open heart for fear of tasting the bitter flavor of frustration. Conscious of his aleatory capacity of interacting with reality by phone, Tomek may be considered a living symbol of the human inability to perform the least act of love. His disturbing condition of abusive collector of undue slices of reality is doomed to reveal all its limits owing to wrong synergism between his will power immersed in totalizing choices and the frailty of his immature mind deprived of any sense of security given up for lost. So his "bright" object of desire assumes the same solidity of an image reflected in the glass, completely devoid of all real consistence, even if endowed with a paralyzing erotic charge able to melt virtual juvenile ardors like snow in the sun.

Kieslowski shows here an unusual tendency toward reddish tones of the same color of that insane passion which drives Tomek to the perpetration of sexual impure acts forbidden by the sixth commandment, together with Magda, charming thirty-year-old woman affected by exhibitionist mania and late repentance for her sins, opaque and unlikely reminiscence of the evangelic Mary Magdalene. The red color assumes the natural function of dramatic passion, dominating the scene completely such as in the final chapter of the colors trilogy. But while in "Trois couleurs: Rouge" its presence is mixed with a sense of detachment and with skeptical attitude towards every passionate involvements, in "Dekalog 6" one can perceive from afar the heat of the blazing flame ready to burn out suddenly as soon as the real nature of love, fleeting and deceptive, can be unmasked.

The Short Form

[tedg · 5 January 2006]

In film as in music and writing, you have a short form and a long one.

The short form is intended to stroke you into a feeling only. It gives a taste where the other provides nourishment. One is a travelogue while the long form is expected to be a journey.

Right here, right in this very film is a semester of film school, because you can see a master of the short form reach into the long form which he would soon also master.

This is one of the ten short films sketched by his writing partner. His partner would set up the basic dramatic knot and Kieslowski would them fill it out with all sorts of cinematic riches. In the short form, it is enough that those riches are merely rich.

But you need to watch this, and then watch the longer version he made for Cannes and theatrical release. In the longer one, he imposed his will outside the scope of his partner and transformed the film into something else.

Watch this one first. What it does is evoke a tone, establish a song sung between two people. It leaves you in a way that short form can, in midleap — armed only with the tone conveyed.

Now, my filmlife friend. Watch the long form: "A Short Film About Love." It adds 28 minutes. IMDb has it that the short version was derived from the long. But no. The short was created, and then the long.

The longer version has all the events of the short except the end, but is a completely transformed story. It has framing. It has ambiguities (we don't know whose suicide is the one at the beginning); it has internal fate (our heroine weaves, literally, her life and one of the threads is pulled from the stolen telescope).

Both have voyeurism, but the long transforms that into the filmmaker's stance in the manner of "Rear Window." They both have the spilled milk. But look at how the longer one evokes that afterward as the point at which the filmmaker enters the world of love.

In the long one, we the voyeurs in the theater become implicated. It is masterful, that fold.

In this short form, we the audience are placed in the other side. Kieslowski has been looking at us (in all ten) and showing us ourselves, and at the end of this, it is we who have the question she shows in her face.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

"Though shalt not commit adultery"

[ackstasis · 9/10 · 20 February 2011]

Episode 6 of 'Dekalog' is very strongly indebted to Hitchcock's 'Rear Window (1954).' For the past year, young Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) has been spying on the life of his older neighbour, the promiscuous Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska). When he finally finds the courage to approach Magda in the flesh, she is amused by his awkward advances, and decides to toy with his adolescent emotions. Her rejection ultimately leads Tomek to attempt suicide, in a heartbreaking scene that forces the viewer to wait an eternity before the bathwater begins to stain red.

In Hitchcock's film, the viewer was basically confined to James Stewart's cramped apartment. Kieslowski, on the other hand, adroitly shifts the viewer's perspective as the story matures. In the opening scene, the focus is on Magda, whom we presume is the main character, and I mentally brushed aside the post-office clerk as an insignificant bit- part. Instead, the film follows Tomek, and our glimpses of Magda are for a long time restricted to distant glimpses across an apartment courtyard, silent but titillating in their voyeurism. By the end of the film, the roles have been entirely reversed; Magda begins to obsessively scan Tomek's bedroom with her binoculars.

Kieslowski had previously released this episode in a feature-length version under the title 'A Short Film About Love (1988).' I haven't seen this film – nor, indeed, have I seen any of the director's work outside the mini-series – but I'd love to see how he expands upon the relationship between Tomek and Magda. This particular episode falls under the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery," though perhaps something about coveting thy neighbour's wife would've been more appropriate. I'm not particularly phased, though; Kieslowki is constantly blurring the lines between the commandments.

Is There a Second Chance?

[Hitchcoc · 10/10 · 19 June 2021]

This is a captivating film. A young man is totally taken with an older woman who lives in an apartment across from him. He uses a little telescopic device to spy on her. He has fallen in love and bumbles around, carelessly finding ways to engage with her. He is very young and careless. Eventually he spills his guts to her. He has watched her for a year and knows so much about her. She is, herself, an angry, lonely person, who sees love as baseless and manipulative. Her original motivation is to gain his affection only to stomp on his heart. But things aren't that simple and she makes a near disastrous mistake. In the end we are left to guess a bit, but the film is highly satisfying.

Obsessive and saturated

[Polaris_DiB · 6/10 · 31 July 2006]

I think the film "A Short Film about Love" is a better descriptor than the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" in this case because the "adultery" in this sense is much more symbolic than some of the other segments of the Decalogue. Most of the Decalogue is steeped in layers of symbolic and discursive intention, making this a moot point, but altogether I must say that this is one of the least well-developed and thematically linked segments within the Decalogue.

A young schoolboy finds himself fascinated with a neighbor who is sexually prolific but longs to find someone she can truly connect to. The schoolboy translates his feelings to love (haven't we all at some point?) and pursues the neighbor, who finds herself genuinely interested in this purveyance but has become too cynical about love to accept his approach. When the two of them mesh, it results in uncomfortable emotional lack of responsibility that endangers the boy's frail (and in my opinion shallow) mind.

Once again dealing with opposites, Kieslowski's structured relationship between the two is not only the focus but the most interesting aspect of this episode, mostly since the woman's current lover is banal and the boy's history is uninteresting. Still, something about the obsessive tendencies of love and the difficulty in interpreting feelings sticks well, and is one of the film's best themes.

--PolarisDiB

So much to do in so little time

[Look Closer · 13 September 2002]

Once again Kieslowski manages to produce a compelling and thought provoking film. This time seemingly constructing his plot from the best parts of "Rear Window" and "Lolita". Kieslowski presents his characters simply as they are, free of prologues, backgrounds, flashbacks or exposition and does not "ask" us to identify with the obsessive voyeur or the subject of his gaze but "presents" them to us as subjects to observe. Inevitably Kieslowski's choices pay off as we begin to empathize with these characters not necessarily because he wants us to but because they're needs and desires are too similar to ours for us to simply look at them in disgust. Episode 6 presents us with two characters who begin on opposite sides of the emotional spectrum and end up reversed just as their voyeuristic tendencies do. There is never any chastising from one character to another which some have called unrealistic or contrived. For me however this rings truer than the most moralizing of speeches because both characters know they're in no position to judge the other. They're both aware of their faults and willingly pay for them (witness Magda's indifference to her own suffering and Tomek's voluntary repentance courtesy of Magda's lover (ala "Raging Bull"). To those who would call such a tale unrealistic I say go watch "Pretty Woman" again.

Olaf Lubaszenko

[Kirpianuscus · 6 November 2018]

His Tomek , for long time, was , in the case of me, almost a memory about a personal experience. From the serie of "it could be". Because he gives the entire map of an existence looking for the truth of him in the most personal manner. The honesty of Tomek is the source of the strange atmosphere and powerful message. The love with its so many nuances. The sincere need of the other. The fascination and ingenuity and the life who is, in some measure, part of yours. And the end. Sure, a short version of a known Kieslowski film. But, maybe, more personal. Or seductive. Or fascinating.

Cat and Mouse

[simuland · 29 December 2000]

Cat-and-mouse game of voyeur and victim, with an exchange of roles between the two about halfway through. Seems to have been well-received by the critics, but I found it too coy and contrived, not to mention compromised by a lack of credibility: The supposedly naive pure idealistic love of the voyeur, a 19 year-old boy, fails to acknowledge the inherent ugliness of voyeurism. Voyeurism entails a sinister imbalance of power between watcher and watched; it consists of cruelty and exploitation more than love; all of which the woman seemed to overlook much too easily. If the boy truly loved her, he would have stopped stalking her; his isn't love, but disease. The whole affair is intellectual structuralism at its worst, a plot concocted to demonstrate a point. Apparently, the woman spied upon "adulterates" the boy's love by humiliating him, as well as being unfaithful to her lover and unfaithful to love itself by her cynicism (thus violating the commandment, though unmarried). Her repentance and reversal seems as sudden and arbitrary as everything else in the film. Silly color coding abounds; the stranger in white (angel of death?) here carries a suitcase and shopping bag. The only intriguing element for me was the surrogate mother's sexual possessiveness, a tickle of evil.

best of the series that i've seen so far

[aptpupil79 · 6 October 2003]

the best of the series that i've seen so far. i guess you could call this one a sort of cinema verite style. the meat of this film is in the story and the characters. so much of the story is told without dialogue and that's sexy. the acting is very good as i've quickly come to expect from kieslowski's crew and the story was just plain good. the changing of roles midway through provided and interesting situation while avoiding a contrived feeling. B+.