246 - Dekalog: Two, 1989, Poland. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Sunday, September 3, 2017

246 - Dekalog: Two, 1989, Poland.  Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Exodus 20:7 - Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Deuteronomy 5:11 - Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

We return to the same apartment complex as yesterday, in Dekalog: Two.  Right away we get the feeling that all ten films will take place here.  And we wonder if the lives of the people in each film might intertwine at some point, as we saw them do in Three Colors.

Dorota Geller comes to see the doctor in his apartment.  They live in the same complex.  (She lives in apartment 902.)  He does not know her but he has seen her.  In fact, he saw her earlier today, first in the elevator, and again when he went out for milk.  She was standing at the end of the hallway looking out the window.  Looking anxious.  Smoking.

She wants to see him.  He offers Wednesday.  Today is Monday.  She needs him now.  Her husband is in the hospital.  And he might be dying.  She needs to know.

We will eventually discover her dilemma.  She is pregnant.  She and her husband have never been able to get pregnant.  But she is pregnant by another man.  If her husband is going to die, then she will keep the baby.  If her husband is going to live then she will abort the baby.

The story will unfold to a most complicated conclusion.

While watching the film, one might expect that it grows out from a different commandment than it does--Thou shalt not commit adultery, concerning the affair, or Thou shalt not murder, concerning the intended abortion--but it grows out from Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain. This is the third Commandment.  Have we skipped the second one?  Charts show that Kieslowski conflated the first two in the first film and that he will split the last one (Thou shalt not covet) in the last two films.

It appears Dorota has tried to put the doctor in a position where he must "play God."

The doctor does not bite.  He tells her that he does not know whether or not her husband will live, and he will not speculate.  The diagnosis, treatment, and surgery all came late, and statistically his odds are not good.  However, the doctor has seen cases where people in worse condition have survived.

Or maybe he does bite.  Later.

After looking at slides in a microscope, he insists to his resident that the results are ambiguous, despite the appearance of progression.  Yet when she informs him that she has planned an abortion, he tells her not to do it--because her husband's pathogens are metastasizing.  Perhaps his desire for her to let the baby live has compelled him to give her the more certain diagnosis that she has so desperately craved.

She will have the baby.

But then something else will happen.

Watching a Kieslowski movie means watching details.  And listening.

The Doctor nurtures life.  He keeps plants, including a particular cactus, and birds, and fish.  Dorota, however, kills life.  She plucks the leafs of her perfectly healthy plant until they are all gone.  Then she breaks the stem.

Symbolism of life comes in vertical movement, suggesting man's relationship to God.

A hare has fallen from an upper apartment window.  The supervisor brings it around.  He asks the doctor if it is his.  The doctor says No.

Dorota in her despair slides a glass off a table.  In close-up slow motion the coaster falls and shatters, followed by the glass, which shatters and sends liquid in all directions.

Andrzej, Dorota's husband, is a mountain climber.  His colleague brings Dorota his backpack.  She angrily insists he still keep it at the club, as he is still a member and still has storage rights.

A bee struggles to emerge from a glass of liquid.  It is wet.  It is sticky.  It climbs on the spoon.  It climbs up the spoon.  It makes it to the rim and walks the rim.

There are more details.

The doctor boils water, in three different types of pots and one tea kettle, on the four eyes of his stove, in order to heat the water in his bathtub.  A pipe is leaking.  It drip drip drips at various moments throughout the film.

He has two different brands of coffee in his kitchen--Hills Bros. and Maxwell House.  They had Hills Bros. and Maxwell House in Poland in 1989.  And he has both.  One on a shelf above and to the side of the other.

Dorota has a clock radio-cassette player-telephone answering machine all in one device.  One might consider this technology to be outdated, but it is pretty impressive.

While confiding her dilemma to the doctor in his apartment, Dorota goes to extinguish her cigarette.  (She started smoking before he told her from the other room that she could smoke.)  She absentmindedly extinguishes it in the matchbox she is still holding!  It lights all the matches, which flame up inside the box.

Frankly, one wonders if the commandment Kieslowski is treating is Thou shalt not smoke while pregnant.

Dorota is a violinist.  She plays for the Philharmonic.  She is supposed to bring her lover his scores, which is left behind.  This reminds us of Three Colors: Blue.

She once ran over the doctor's dog.  This reminds us of Three Colors: Red.

In the end someone will ask the Doctor, "Do you know what it is like to have a baby?"

And he will say, "I do."