Dekalog 9 + 10

Krzysztof Kieślowski: Dekalog 9 + 10

Ninth and tenth parts of Kieslowski’s monumental TV seriesDekalog, about the Ten Commandments. In the ninth episode, an impotent heart surgeon suggests that his wife take a lover; in the last part, two brothers will do anything to complete a valuable postage stamp collection.

In all episodes of theDekalog series, the characters become entangled by chance in circumstances that hold them hostage. Their lives are pale – the ten episodes are set amongst the grey concrete of a typical Polish suburb – and so is their future: higher powers seem to hold them in their grasp; any sense of ethics is present only in the background.

Kieslowski screened the series in its entirety at the Venice film festival (1989). An incredible achievement, especially during the turbulent times following the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Communist leaders were being forced to allow free elections.

Programme

Dekalog 9
An impotent heart surgeon suggests that his loving wife can sate her carnal appetites in the arms of another man. What starts out as a casual affair becomes a real relationship, much to the husband’s displeasure. This unbearable situation then drives him to extreme deeds, putting the couple’s love and his own will to live to the test. At the intersection of comedy and tragedy, Kieslowski asks questions about the basis of marriage, and what infidelity really means.
Dekalog 10
An orderly bourgeois Polish man and his brother, a lapsed rocker, inherit their father’s valuable postage stamp collection and find out that it is greatly coveted by dealers, some of dubious character. The deeper the brothers become embroiled in their father’s world, the more dire and comical their situation becomes.

This is part of

De films van Kieślowski

Special screenings

Dekalog 1 + 2

Dekalog 7 + 8

City Life

Director

Krzysztof Kieślowski

Production year

1988

Length

115 min.

Country

Language

Polish

Subtitles

English

Part of

De films van Kieślowski

Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski broke through internationally with his ten-part series Dekalog, which examined the meaning of the Ten Commandments for modern humans.

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