Word: kieslowski
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...DECALOGUE A decade ago, Krzysztof Kieslowski made his 10-part cycle of short films, which dramatize the Ten Commandments in modern Poland. In their scope, wit, power and ethical poignancy, they stand even taller today. The series, available in some video stores, still has not achieved U.S. release--a high crime against high artistry...
...less comforting (read Republican) vision, Clinton can examine the "Decalogue", Krzysztof Kieslowski's ten-hour, brilliantly dark retelling of each of the commandments. Poland never looked more beautiful, even if watching all ten earnest hours seems more than a little dutiful. But -- careful, Bill -- don't look to close, not at a series that has segments with titles like "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery...
...Kieslowski and his gifted screenwriting colleague, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, knew that drama begins with the human face; it is a sponge for the viewer's emotional complicity. So the camera takes closeup mug shots of faces in love or anxiety. Or it crouches furtively, behind a tree, in a closet like a fretful nephew or an avid voyeur. It watches ordinary people (including some of the most beautiful actresses in Europe) tangling with moral demons, holding on to what they were taught to believe or--this being real life in Poland just after martial law--what they have learned to settle...
...Neither Kieslowski nor Piesiewicz was a practicing Catholic. They were interested in examining the relevance of old laws in a Catholic country in a postmoral age. Decalogue, Five, which was made into a longer piece called A Short Film About Killing, shows two brutal, useless murders. In the first a drifter, for no special reason, strangles a taxi driver; the scene lasts seven excruciating minutes. In the second the killer is hanged by the state; that execution takes only a moment, but it is no less ugly or vindictive. The state, like individuals, has few reasons, many excuses. Kieslowski absolves...
...same impact on a viewer, for this film is Kieslowski's confession of the awful power in watching people--which is exactly what movies are. Now audiences have the precious opportunity to watch a great filmmaker watching...