Dekalog VII

Saw Dekalog VII, Thou shalt not steal. This one was about a young woman, Majka, who was pregnant at 16 and whose mother agreed to take her infant daughter. They still live together, but the daughter legally belongs to Majka's mother. In one of the early scenes in the episode, Majka is ineptly trying to comfort her daughter who suffers from night terrors. Her mother's hand is then seen on Majka 's shoulder in what seems like a tender gesture of comfort until she roughly pushes Majka aside, so that she may administer her own expert comforting. This single motion reveals the entire thrust of the story. By denying Majka the opportunity to work out some way of comforting her own daughter, she is widening the rift between all three of them and further ensuring that Majka will remain unable to provide motherly comfort. Majka hatches a plan to steal her daughter back from her mother and to run away to Canada. Ah ha, we think, here's the theft. But as the scene with her mother illustrates, another theft has been taking place since before this episode starts, with Majka's mother slowly stealing her child away. It is unclear which of the thefts (if either or perhaps both) is morally wrong. Is stealing back what is yours theft?

Majka is characterized from the start as lost, directionless, and kind of desperate. She has apparently just been expelled from college for some reason. This is a clever conceit because although we do want Majka to repossess her daughter, we can't believe the daughter will actually have a better life with her, leaving the story a bit more fraught and interesting than it might have been otherwise. There's an awesome scene where Majka is trying to get her daughter to call her 'mommy' instead of 'Majka.' The daughter won't and Majka is reduced to shouting 'Mommy! Mommy!' and it suddenly becomes ambiguous whether she is shouting instructions, or plaintively crying for her own mother. Brilliant.

The ending is a similarly ambiguous fade-out on the daughter. She has just run some distance and it's unclear if she is panting for breath or starting to crying. Shortly before, there is a random man on crutches who I think is just there to provide some ambient pathos. I am completely at a loss for her father though, who is constantly tinkering with a broken church organ. Why a broken organ? I don't know. Similarly, Majka's baby-daddy makes teddy bears in a similarly confusing turn. Is there supposed to be an irony in the mass production of artificial affection? I think I'm over analyzing a bit, but this series rewards analysis.