Dekalogue

So, we arrive at the end of the Dekalogue. Reading back over my previous entries, I notice I approach the series more as a puzzle to be solved than as a work of art to be enjoyed. Again and again I say I don't understand, I can't see, don't know. I grasp at genius images and Christ-figures. I curse subtitles (hated foe!) and misinterpret commandments. As a purely emotional experience it is melancholy and fairly grim. The moments of joy are almost always alloyed with stoicism and it's not usually clear how to feel about things. As a cerebral exercise, it's rewarding but terribly, sometimes impossibly, challenging (I'm looking at you, False Witness.) Taken together, like chocolate with peanut butter, or peanut butter with chocolate, the clever and the moving parts of the series whirl around each other, sometimes pulling together, sometimes pulling apart, always intersecting and dividing and dazzling.

This dazzle however is mostly postprandial. Don't misunderstand and go in expecting fireworks. Go in expecting riddles. The cleverness of the series lies mostly in what it doesn't do. As I pointed out before, it doesn't condemn, it doesn't go for easy resolutions, and it doesn't go for easy answers (even though the 'answer' to each episode is given away in the titles, preceded by a 'thou shalt.') This series could have been so little but it was so much more instead.

As I've said before, I am essentially a weak man. I prefer visual splendor and histrionics to think-piece puzzles. I'm only human. So I'm afraid that, austere and ingenious though these films were, I won't bring it up when discussing my favorites. Like a cathedral, it's a fascinating and complex place to visit (even for 10 hours,) but a tough one to live in. Approach with caution, but approach, friends, approach.