Dekalog, dziewiec

A knowledgeable film enthusiast will surely know the way in which infidelity is treated by some of the biggest names in European cinema. For a good example there is French Hitchcock Claude Chabrol whose films take pleasure in showing husbands brutally killing the lovers of their wives when they come to know of their wives' foolish infidelities.There is also Krzysztof Kieslowski,a Polish cinéaste who presents an East European vision of modern Polish society dealing with males and females cheating their respective partners."Dekalog: Dekalog,Dziewiec (#1.9)" turns out to be an outstanding infidelity film as it makes an honest attempt to link marital infidelity with confidence,trust and love which is needed by all couples in order to nurture and sustain their married lives.In this medium length feature Kieslowski asks a challenging question :can a bourgeois couple have reason to cheat each other if they have everything which they could wish for ? It is for the viewers to search for an answer which suits their intellectual level keeping in mind that nothing worthwhile can be said about a couple which is dishonest in spite of having no dearth of emotional richness.

Surgeon reacts to a diagnosis of impotence as if it were a terminal illness, urging his wife to take a lover and plunging into suicidal depression. His wife, however, is willing to live with the diagnosis and swears to a love above and beyond sex, which he rejects, at first; the movie is about his struggling with and final acceptance of this Platonic ideal. Jealousy leads him to spy on and covet his own wife, ergo the commandment. But this only humiliates him further. In a parallel, somewhat superfluous plot, a young female patient asks his advice about a risky operation which would enable her to sing, her life's dream. Both face the same dilemma of whether or not to accept a physical limitation which deprives them of their life's passion. Unlike him, the young woman is willing to live with her disease and forego singing. He changes her mind.

I thought the surgeon and the film, both, over-reacted to the diagnosis, assigned too much weight to it. The melodramatic lack of perspective makes the movie as moribund as its subject matter. Of course, it's amply color coded; the passing stranger in white rides by again; and, again, there's lapse of credibility: the surgeon shares a cigarette with the patient who is supposed to have a disease so debilitating as to prevent her from singing--this makes no sense. But, once again, K. knows how to make the final scene count, canceling earlier shortcomings, at least for a moment.

Overwrought arty soap opera.

By this stage of the series one is right to be more than a little weary and wary of having the same heart strings tugged on to play the same melancholy tune.

I'm a bit upset at our filmmaker.

I know that each of these ten is its own little experiment. Each has its own adventure in vision and dreaming. But all ten have an arc as well. Oh, not in the stories; they're good enough in their way. What I mean is the cadence that comes from the difference in how each of these sees.

Some have an eager eye, others lazy. Sometimes the eye is inside the emotional container of the thing. Sometimes, often, the camera is liquid on some surface that is emotionally tipped. They're all different, and together we have a sort of poem in how the rocks are arranged in the sky for us to see as art after we have seen the immediate art by standing on each of them.

So we are nearing the end, and this penultimate eye is essential to giving us distance.

Sure enough, almost everything about this is perfect. Its about spying, about placing yourself to see — hoping to not get hit by what we see and knowing we will.

There's lots of architectural framing, interstitial platforms and invaginations. Its about children lost before they were had, the greatest tragedy.

So why am I miffed, if it is so perfect, so delicately jolting? Because in the final scene he leaves his Kieslowski world and gives us a shot so banal, so ordinary, so conventionally shot we wonder what he was thinking. Its a phone call, alternating between the husband calling and the wife receiving.

Its a Hitchcock-derived shot. Now don't get me wrong, Hitchcock invented the curious, floating camera that Kieslowski (and Chris Doyle) exploit. But his setups are so quoted now that to use one today is almost a matter of parody. And that's what we are left with.

I can only assume that the difference was intended, that our filmmaker wanted to let us know that things will be different now. That it will now be "real" and not a man and woman acting real and watching themselves work at it.

But it is shocking, that call.

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

Eventually, this episode from the DEKALOG series will take on a life of its own. Beginning with a melodramatic premise-- a successful young doctor afflicted with irremediable impotence instructs his loving wife to take a lover-- Kieslowski constructs a 50 minute drama of extraordinary impact, the end of which is an affirmation of their marriage as a spiritual state these partners only half-perceive themselves. I called the film tragic above, but its arc parallels Shakespeare's late romance, THE WINTER'S TALE, right down to a near-miraculous conclusion. A lovely piece of work.

An episod about its viewers. Doubts and generosity, fear and trust. And the impecable mannonesty. And about the structure of vulnerability. All - simple and clear and powerfull. er to show an ordinary story defining its basic traits. A husband and his wife. A good advice and a secret. The appearences. And the cold truth. But, more important, the right choice. The atmosphere is the lead pillar. Sure, each episode is defined but atmosphere but in this case , it represents the key for define attitudes, thoughts, gestures and decisions. A film about the roots of h