Dekalog – Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 10-hour masterwork on life’s big questions
The Polish director’s 10-part drama delivers unusually nuanced observations about love, co-existence and death
One of the towering pillars of world cinema, Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 10-part, 10-hour Dekalog (1988) is an unusually nuanced examination of the way people relate to one another.
In spite of its references to the Bible’s 10 commandments, it’s a work of humanism rather than religion. Kieslowski and co-scriptwriter, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, use commandments such as “Though shalt not kill” as springboards to explore the complexity and often relative nature of ethical decisions, and highlight the difficulty of separating the right thing to do from the wrong in real-life situations.
Originally filmed as a 10-part series for Polish television, Dekalog was later shown internationally, in part or in a series, at cinemas. The original video release made it easy to see in its entirety.
The stories, each of which features different performers, are all set around a grim apartment block that Kieslowski later said was one of the better residences in Warsaw.