254 - Dekalog: Ten, 1990, Poland. Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Monday, September 11, 2017

254 - Dekalog: Ten, 1990, Poland.  Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Exodus 20:17 - Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. . . .

Deuteronomy 5:21 - Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbor's.

Artur plays in a metal band.  City Death.

Jerzy is his brother.

Their father has died.  Their father, Czeslaw Root Janicki.

We saw him two movies ago.  In Dekalog: Eight.  He was the neighbor of the older woman who taught ethics classes.  Zofia.  He showed her his recent acquisition of stamps depicting the 1931 German flight of three zeppelins over the North Pole.  The Polarfarht.

Now he is dead, and the two brothers attend his funeral and begin the process of going through his belongings.

His apartment had tremendous security.

In going through it they discover his stamp collection.

It turns out to be mighty.

When Artur takes a few to a stamp convention, the man manning the booth goes and gets the president of the organization.  The president in turn goes home with them.  It is he who alerts them to the fortune they have in their possession.

When they first acquire the stamps, Artur gives the three zeppelins to Jerzy's son, who in turn trades them to a young man on the street.

In tracking down the young man and a string of street sales, Jerzy finally meets a stamp salesman who may be his own only connection into that world.

But he may also be crooked.

And he may also have opened a Pandora's box of problems for the two brothers.

The brothers are about to go on a journey together.  And they will have their brotherhood tested along the way.  Will it survive?  What will come of them?

The brothers are played joyfully by veterans Jerzy Stuhr and Zbigniew Zamachowski--both of whom will appear a few years later in Three Colors: White (1994).

This film is a fitting close to the Dekalog series.