Kieslowski’s Dekalog

Kieslowski’s Dekalog

More than any other director, Krzysztof Kieslowski was interested in chance and its evil twin, fate. It plays a major role in films like Blind Chance (1981) and The Double Life of Véronique (1991). But they are arguably explored in most depth in Dekalog (1988-1990).

Made for Polish TV, with the exception of two episodes that were first released as longer cinema features, Dekalog is comprised of ten one-hour films that are inspired by Christianity’s Ten Commandments. However, Kieslowski refuses to ever name them, adding his own variety of random chaos as some episodes could be about more than one commandment.

The setting is a single city towerblock, with each episode portraying a different protagonist struggling to make sense of their lives and find meaning and structure. Religion can be a useful tool for this, though Kieslowski, an atheist, suggests that mysterious other forces are at work too. Call it chance, fate or God’s will but it’s undeniable that we cannot control everything in life. Dekalog shows that when we try to face this momentous realisation, we finally reveal who we really are.

Dekalog: Instruction Manual

The Dekalog consists of 10 episodes of about an hour each. They are shown in groups of two, so you can watch all of them in five sessions, spread over two months. Though they are set in and around the same apartment complex, each film tells an independent story and they can be watched in any order (there is no chronological order). All films have English subtitles with the exception of the cinema versions of Dekalog Five and Six, which run 85 minutes and have French subtitles only (the hour-long versions of Five and Six have English subtitles).