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Page contents: The Decalog: episodes 1-10 (1988) / Turtle Diary (1985) / Camille Claudel 1915 (2013) / A family Resemblance (1996) / Farewell, My Queen (2012)
The Decalogue (1988) - Kieslwoski
One: I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have other gods before me
The players? Krzysztof, a university professor and general all around brainiac. Pawel, his son and Irena, his aunt.
This is a nice family portrait and setting up the locale of the series within the confines of a Warsaw apartment block; the balconies look like crosses piled one atop another all the way up to the sky. The father is a gifted man of learning and science: he's making his son in his own image. When Pawel asks his aunt: What is God? Rather that give him a formula to work the problem out, she hugs him and asks how do you feel? I feel happy. She says: that's where God is hidden.
Pawel delights in each and very new discovery about the world around him--- though he still sleeps with his stuffed toy. He's noticed a certain girl in the neighborhood. She doesn't know it yet, but he's going to be her very first and best boyfriend. He's sad when he discovers that all things must die; that the heart is just a pump that will eventually stop pumping. Christmas is coming, he's already found where all his gifts were hidden. Yeah, Pawel is pretty much precocious.
A tramp has set himself up beside the lake, as if on a vigil, huddled by his roaring fire. This is the same spot where the crowd will gather a couple of days later, to watch the rescue mission. He creates in advance, a place of comfort---this also suggests foreknowledge of the event. This dude's going to be a recurring character in the series, and rather than call him a symbolic representation of Christ or a casual observer of the folly of humankind each and every time. I'm going to give him a real meat and potatoes name like say ... Andy Kilvinski.
This episode is chock full of wonderful foreshadows. Like many of the episodes, the soundtrack can be quite haunting as is such as case with this one. There's a nice scene when Krzysztof is at his work table; and the paper he's editing suddenly darkens and comes alive before his eyes. His intellectual delight dampens the realization that this is a simple wash of color from a broken ink well. This visual motif echoes the emotional drama playing out in the neighborhood at exactly the same time: the spreading panic of the parents.
For all his soaring intelligence, Krzysztof's is unaware that the part of the lake that doesn't freeze over is because of the conduit from the local power station that empties there. The night he makes his calculations, they purge their hot water tanks into the lake. In the professor's pristine and logical universe, everything has a measured and predictable outcome, except for acts of God.
The Decalogue (1988) - Kieslwoski
One: I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have other gods before me
The players? Krzysztof, a university professor and general all around brainiac. Pawel, his son and Irena, his aunt.
This is a nice family portrait and setting up the locale of the series within the confines of a Warsaw apartment block; the balconies look like crosses piled one atop another all the way up to the sky. The father is a gifted man of learning and science: he's making his son in his own image. When Pawel asks his aunt: What is God? Rather that give him a formula to work the problem out, she hugs him and asks how do you feel? I feel happy. She says: that's where God is hidden.
Pawel delights in each and very new discovery about the world around him--- though he still sleeps with his stuffed toy. He's noticed a certain girl in the neighborhood. She doesn't know it yet, but he's going to be her very first and best boyfriend. He's sad when he discovers that all things must die; that the heart is just a pump that will eventually stop pumping. Christmas is coming, he's already found where all his gifts were hidden. Yeah, Pawel is pretty much precocious.
A tramp has set himself up beside the lake, as if on a vigil, huddled by his roaring fire. This is the same spot where the crowd will gather a couple of days later, to watch the rescue mission. He creates in advance, a place of comfort---this also suggests foreknowledge of the event. This dude's going to be a recurring character in the series, and rather than call him a symbolic representation of Christ or a casual observer of the folly of humankind each and every time. I'm going to give him a real meat and potatoes name like say ... Andy Kilvinski.
This episode is chock full of wonderful foreshadows. Like many of the episodes, the soundtrack can be quite haunting as is such as case with this one. There's a nice scene when Krzysztof is at his work table; and the paper he's editing suddenly darkens and comes alive before his eyes. His intellectual delight dampens the realization that this is a simple wash of color from a broken ink well. This visual motif echoes the emotional drama playing out in the neighborhood at exactly the same time: the spreading panic of the parents.
For all his soaring intelligence, Krzysztof's is unaware that the part of the lake that doesn't freeze over is because of the conduit from the local power station that empties there. The night he makes his calculations, they purge their hot water tanks into the lake. In the professor's pristine and logical universe, everything has a measured and predictable outcome, except for acts of God.