Having gotten the videos of the Decalogue one volume at a time over the last 6 months from the Denver Public Library, I have enjoyed an extended appreciation of this towering masterpiece. Kiewslowski created so many moods, characters, settings, and above all, stories that engaged me completely, challenging me to pay attention, to care, and not to assume I knew where the story was going. So many wonderful endings and denouements, some painful, some twisted decidedly upward. #10 is decidedly a comedy. The two brothers, as we get to know them, are led into a sort of avarice and then a love for their late father's stamp collection, which is vastly more valuable than they imagined. Their greatest sin seems to be not growing paranoid over their inheritance, but that they were distant from the father, as well as from each other. I believe that the sin of coveting was committed by the unscrupulous dealer, whom we have reason to sympathize with in the strange (and beautifully conceived) barter that is at the core of this great story. I agree that to end this great decalogue with laughter is brilliant and makes the whole work even more memorable. I just saw this final show yesterday, and now I'm thinking about getting Episodes 1 and 2 again. (A new multi-screen art cinema opened in Denver this spring, and one of their initial bookings was The Decalogue, a week for each pair of films. I should have gone and seen them on the big screen, but they were after all created for television...)
Review of Dekalog, dziesiec
