Krzysztof Kieslowski's DECALOGUE, a series of short films made for Polish television and inspired by the Ten Commandments, concludes with a black-humored illustration of the commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods."
Jerzy (Jerzy Stuhr) and Artur (Zbigniew Zamachowski), two brothers who haven't seen much of each other in recent years, are reunited by the death of their father, a miser who sacrificed his family and his life for his stamp collection. When their father's acquaintance Bromski offers to cancel a
substantial debt in exchange for some of the stamps, the brothers suspect that the collection may be worth something. Little do they know: investigation shows them that their father was a well-known collector with a highly valued, and much-coveted, collection. They are discouraged from breaking up
the collection by another collector who notes that it represents their father's entire life.
Artur and Jerzy turn the tables on a crooked shop owner (Henryk Blata) who cheated them. Afterwards, the shop owner meets with them to propose a deal: He is able to locate the one stamp that their father most wanted but was unable to locate. But it comes with a high price--Jerzy must donate his
kidney to the shop owner's ailing daughter. Having caught some of his father's mania (as has Artur), Jerzy agrees. While both brothers are at the hospital, their father's apartment is broken into and the entire uninsured collection is stolen. After they get over the shock, the brothers begin to
suspect each other of having planned the theft, and say so to the investigating police officer. But when a chance spotting of the shop owner and Bromski makes them realize that they are the real thieves, the brothers apologize to each other for their suspicions.
DECALOGUE 10 opens with a truly funny moment, though the humor springs entirely from the context of the nine hours of soul-searching that have preceded it: a band performing a punk song urging its audience to break as many commandments as possible. (Kieslowski provided the lyrics.) That Kieslowski
can be funny may come as a bit of a shock, though not to those who saw the middle entry of his "Three Colors" trilogy, WHITE (1994), whose star, Zbigniew Zamachowski, appears here as the punk brother, Artur. It doesn't disparage Kieslowki's formidable accomplishment to note that, by this point in
DECALOGUE, a little humor is highly welcome, particularly for audiences who have consumed the whole thing in one or two sittings. Nor is this an inappropriate place for it: obsession and acquisitiveness are prime sources of humor, and covetousness is hardly one of the more loathsome sins.
(Presumably it's on the list to get the total number of commandments up to a nice round ten.) And while Kieslowski feels that all ten of these films have positive endings, it's nice that it all ends with an unambiguously pleasant one: two brothers sharing a light moment after having put their
differences aside.
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