Dekalog IX

Saw Dekalog IX, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. I see now that I mistook the adultery episode for this one (that is, I understood adultery to refer exclusively to coveting wives.) Oops. Anyway, this episode is about a doctor who discovers that he is impotent. Not only sterile but unable, for some reason, to preform the physical act. He is devastated and tells his wife that he would understand if she wants a divorce Edit: no, I'd forgotten: he tells her to take a lover! When she refuses, he proposes they adopt instead. Later, he suspects his wife of having actually taken a lover and carefully bugs their phone and secretly copies her key to her mother's apartment. He spies on them, watches them have sex, and generally behaves horribly (this gives us an awesome scene where he's rooting through her mail and finds a postcard from her lover. On the back, as he reads it, we see the pope looking at us through binocular-hands. Brilliant.) Now yes, granted, cheating on your spouse is shitty, so the wife isn't blameless here but the doctor is painted in a bad light throughout. He even kind-of hits on a female patient whose heart he's going to be operating on (I know) before he has any evidence of any cheating going on, which makes him kind-of a hypocrite.

Anyway, she intuits that he knows something and breaks it off with the lover. She immediately afterwards find her husband crouched in a nearby closet (it only sounds funny in isolation. This is not a very humorous scene.) and though she is angry and embarrassed, she is mainly relieved. Now it's over. But the lover will not take 'no' for an answer and follows her around, forcing meetings and confrontations. The doctor sees only that they are still meeting and unsuccessfully attempts suicide. As he is recovering, she says 'Thank god, you're alright' and he responds 'Yes, I am.' But clearly he is not alright. Bugging phones and attempting suicide are not the actions of an alright man. We are to believe that they're going to stay together and adopt because otherwise he'll kill himself. This is the moral ambiguity this series enjoys so much. We know that they are morally compelled to stay together, but doubt that they will really work together.

Note though that this crisis is precipitated by the actions of the lover. After she breaks it off, the doctor is still despondent, but is beginning to relax a bit. (His suspicions are symbolized by a faulty glove box in his car. When he first suspects his wife, the glove box keeps frustratingly falling open. After the rejection of the lover, he's still a bit suspicious, but must now pound on the glove box to get it to open. When he spots his lover en route to his wife, the glove box immediately falls open on its own.) Only after the lover persists do we come to the point where the wife is rushing to get into contact with the doctor for fear of his life and safety. Therefor the moral of the story and the damaging nature of the coveting of the wife.

There was some stuff I couldn't understand with a physics work-book (I think it represents his wife, or his affection for his wife.) and there's one of those oddly significant men again, this time on a bike, but I think I understood most of this one. I have fewer question-marks floating above my head this time anyway (although.) I'm looking forward to the grand finale!