Dekalog, siedem

In Decalogue 7, some tough questions are asked by Kieslowski about parenting especially the roles played by both a father as well as a mother. This film is told through the tough life of Ania-a young girl raised by her real grand mother Ewa, who does not know that in reality Majka is her real mother. As the film develops, audiences are bombarded with tough ethical as well as moral questions. Who is the real mother to a child ? The woman who gives "biological birth" to a child or a woman who is merely better at looking after a child. These questions make a lot of sense for Ania as it is not her mother Majka but grand mother Ewa who is able to allay her fears whenever she wakes up in night due to bad dreams about wolves. Regardless of what one might say, a true woman who has borne a child would always want herself to be addressed as "Maman/Mummy/Mother". She would never appreciate her child calling her by the first name. It is due to this dilemma that Majka is compelled to take Ania with her. This twist in the story raises a simple yet highly complex question : Can one steal what belongs to one self ? The answer is simple. No, one cannot steal what belongs to oneself. One merely needs to ask about one's own belongings if they have gone into other hands. This is the ethical element which Kieslowski must have wanted to present in his film. Like in some other films made by him, Kieslowski is honest as far the portrayal of characters is concerned. In Decalogue 7, the portrayal of men is brutal, frank and honest without any embellishments as men in this short film were mere mute spectators. They are not being able to make much difference in the lives of their daughters. Lastly, what makes this short film a good moving experience is that the maturity level of Ania is very high compared to other girls of her age group.

The film can be evaluated at several levels. It offers several layers of meaning, teasing the viewer as it progresses.

Kidnapping your own daughter from the ownership of your mother is a bizarre situation. Two women want to own a young child--the biological mother and the grandmother who yearned to "suckle" another. Interestingly the script looks at three generations of the same sex. The males seem to be the outsiders, yet balanced in comparison to the females in the movie.

"Thou shall not steal" is the commandment that is apparently broken. The film leads you to believe that the mother has "kidnapped" her own child. The film seems to argue quite elegantly that the real thief is the grandparent not the "kidnapping" mother. The "kidnapping" is symbolic--the police is mentioned not seen. The law presented in the film is moral one, not a civil one. In the end, it is the natural affection the child yearns for that is stolen, not by an individual but by circumstances (the state?).

Is this a veiled criticism of Poland, the effect of communism on the young emerging democracy? What would have happened if the "stealing" within and without the movie did not take place? The film begins with the sound of the child crying that can be heard outside the walls of the house; the film ends with the silent cry of the child in the open, without walls and yet the cry cannot be heard, only seen (harking back to Rod Steiger's silent cry at the end of "The Pawnbroker"). Is fleeing to Canada (read: Western capitalism) a better option than staying back in the overgrown, ummowed gardens (with dilapidated merry-go-rounds) of Poland? Is making teddy bears a better life than taking care of your child? Is he making an argument for "stealing" becoming honorable for the cause of freedom? The film leaves you with more questions than answers, yet providing a mature level of entertainment for the intelligent viewer.

I had the good fortune to have met Kieslowski in 1982 after he made "Camera Buff" in Bangalore, India, a film that did not have the sparkle and maturity of his later works. Little did I imagine that he would go on to make the "Three colors" trilogy and "Decalogue". These later works make you wonder at the ambiguity of his later work--the beguiling smile of a Mona Lisa as he deals with religion, politics, morals with a twinkle in his eye.

This episode may be seem to present an unusual story but what a masterful way to present it. Innocence is limited to one character in the entire film: the child. Just one word describes the episode, brilliant in philosophy and in cinema, thanks partly to cinematographer Dariusz Kuc.

Theologically analyzed, the film offers more for reflection. The subject of stealing goods is arguably covered by the 10th commandment "thou shalt not covet thy neighbours goods" and the seventh commandment is often subtly interepreted as "thou shalt not kidnap" (read Wikepedia on "Ten Commandments" quoting a Jewish Rabbi, Rashi). This is probably the reason why the film is all about kidnapping and not about stealing goods which is dealt by the director and screenplay writer in Decalogue 10--which is all about stealing goods and about "coveting thy neighbor's goods"--confusing many critics who missed the distinction being made on screen. This is a fine example of cinema that invites you to read more after seeing the film (and revise your own judgement). Pieseiewicz and Kiesolwski had done their homework!

The filial love pushed to the extreme is the main point of one of the most despairing episodes of the whole series. Painted in soft tones of a warm color photography "Dekalog 7", a sorrowful appeal against the theft of maternal affections, a touching scream of desperation against every form of domestic psychological abuse, describes the emotional journey of lonely souls towards a past immersed in voids of time and memory, thwarted by walls of self-referential egoism and full of wrong choices due to scarce sense of consciousness.

Lawful and unlawful mothers deprived of filial affection. Human beings wandering through the fury of winds of despair whose smell they can scent over and over again. An innocent child at the mercy of acts of adult selfishness destined to affect the course of human events. These are the main points of this collective drama of existence full of regression periods in infancy, clear admonishment in favor of a quiet and sensible mother-daughter relationship.

The director follows the story development most closely, avoiding to keep the events at a distance as if they were no concern of him, showing on the contrary a clear sensitiveness towards this anomalous drama of two mothers fighting over the possession of the same daughter driven passively from pillar to post. The seventh commandment, "Thou shalt not steal", must be intended in this case as the explication of a dangerous crime: the theft of a child both by her grandmother and by her real mother; the most blamable one depends on our points of view. In my opinion, for instance, to claim the right of someone else's maternity is the most reprehensible action because it does violence to the nature itself, bereaving the human being of his most precious treasure, fruit of a mutual choice of love. As usual, Kieslovski shows his complete respect of the par condicio: he finds both the fictitious mother and the real one guilty: the first one for having taken possession of someone else's motherhood; the second one for having stolen her real child. According to divine law (and to him) a theft is always a theft, and in this tormented quarrel between grown-up persons heedless of the potential damages suffered by a delicate childish psyche, will the ingenuous spontaneity of a child succeed in breaking the wall of incomprehension and hostility between kinsmen?

Custody battle between 22 year-old mother and her own mother over daughter born to the former when she was just 16. Thus, touches on overweening parental possessiveness alluded to in IV, VI and VIII. Very modest in scope, using few actors, a minimum of sets. Like VI, it suffers from lack of credibility: the young mother, a reasonably intelligent woman, undertakes a rather scatterbrained kidnap. Too much of the conflict takes place in the past, not in the movie itself. And, yes, there's color coding. Despite its shortcomings, the anguish is real, and deep enough to force one to recall one's own relationship with one's parents: Another Freudian foray.

Dekalog Seven isn't the strongest of the ten, but, like Dekalog Five, Kieslowski takes a fairly straightforward commandment and adds a twist to it. Sure, we may think Majka steal Ania, but, as Majka says, can you really steal something that was yours to begin with? It's an interesting question, and Kieslowski forces you to consider (And ultimately decide) who, Ewa or Majka, is really at fault for stealing Ania. But that's typical Kieslowski. To have a straightforward plot with a cut-and-dry scenario would be far too easy for him, and I've come to expect nothing less from his work. The types of questions he subtly asks the viewer are more important than any moral he could tell us because it forces us to question our own values and morals, instead of being told, and this kind of questioning is why Kieslowski and his works are so highly regarded.