Dekalog IV

Saw Dekalog IV, Honour thy father and thy mother. Once again the fraught performances and sad violins. This episode starts with a woman waking her husband up, no, not her husband, her father. She takes an eye test, revealing she needs glasses. She mistakenly spells out FATHER (in English) when reading off the eye-chart. I was very frustrated with my subtitles (my eternal enemy!) this time because as the episode progresses I felt things become distressingly incest-y. I have no idea to what degree the father and the daughter were complicit in things getting a little weird. Is the daughter reacting terribly to crisis? Is the father revealing long-suppressed feelings? Are the two of them swept up by feelings they're ill-equipped to deal with? Is this all in my head due to shitty subtitles?

The genius images in this episode were of a man carrying a kite-shaped, or coffin-like kayak over his head (resembling jesus with the cross a bit, though I'm perhaps thinking a bit too religiously) and later the father walking down the middle of a foot-path (not the first time this image has been used. I hope to see it yet again so that I may augustly declare I have identified a theme.)

A frustrating ending, but a satisfyingly real feeling one. The first time I was really taken with the actors' performances (which may not be a good thing: I have a severe weakness for melodrama.) I feel I spotted recurring parenthood themes, but failed to get them to cohere. A pastiche or a meditation perhaps? A troubling episode.

Fake edit: Someone on imdb points out the emphasis on empathy this series has. For a religiously themed show, it is surprisingly free of condemnation. Very nice.