Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5385 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-05-27
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Polish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 278 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
"A terrible idea, of course", was Krzysztof Kieœlowski's first reaction when his co-scriptwriter, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, first suggested the idea for Dekalog--a series of 10 one-hour films, each inspired by one of the Ten Commandments. But from this unpromising beginning came an edgy, unsettling tour de force, the culmination of Kieœlowski's work in his native Poland and, quite possibly, the last cinematic masterpiece to come out of Communist Eastern Europe.

The full Dekalog consists of ten one-hour films: this pair of double discs contains the first five. The links to the specific commandments are often oblique and imprecise, and shouldn't be taken too literally. Kieœlowski is using this framework not as a direct exposition of Mosaic Law, nor even as a commentary on its relevance today, but rather as a series of meditations on the complexity of moral choices. All the films are set in the same drab high-rise Warsaw housing estate, and characters from one story will show up the background of others, passing across the frame as they go about their business. One young man who appears in nearly all the films never plays a leading role nor even speaks a line, but remains a watchful, melancholy presence, haunting and disquieting, gazing at the events unfolding around him like an uneasy conscience.

Grim though these stories are, there's often a note of ironic humour leavening the overall bleakness. But this set ends with one of the grimmest of all. In Dekalog 5 a young man murders a taxi driver for no apparent reason, then is executed himself. Both deaths are equally squalid and appalling. This episode was later expanded to feature-film length with the title A Short Film About Killing. The greater length enhanced its impact; it's a pity that room wasn't found for that longer version here.

On the DVDs: Dekalog, Parts 1-5 offers very little additional material. The second disc, which contains episodes 4 and 5, also includes a brief on-screen text biography and filmography for Kieœlowski. The films are shown in their original 4:3 ratio, in a crisp clean transfer. --Philip Kemp

Video Description
DVD Special Features:

Krzysztof Kieslowski biography and filmography
Polish with English Subtitles
Original 4:3 aspect ratio
Dolby Digital 1.0

Synopsis
One of the greatest and most ambitious cinematic achievements, Krzysztof Kieslowski's THE DECALOG consists of 10 short films inspired by the Ten Commandments. Each film takes place in and around the same area of late-20th-century Warsaw, provoking timeless ethical and moral questions for this era. Specifically, the films address personal issues dealing with family, friends, love, life, and death. Winner of awards from the Venice, Sao Paulo, and Cannes film festivals and originally made for Polish television, Kieslowski's masterwork has been screened all over the world to international acclaim. The video release will give viewers the opportunity to revisit each episode and discover characters from the other films that pop up in the background of the current story and might also help to better explain the mysterious presence of Artur Barcis, a quiet onlooker who might be an angel or a devil. Kieslowski, collaborating with cowriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz, has made a series of films that feel small and intimate yet are actually epic commentaries on modern human existence, making THE DECALOG a lasting work of art. Includes episodes 1 through 5, see also DECALOG 6-10.

Customer Reviews

A Monumental Achievemet
Decalogue is a monumental achievement: a remarkable examination of moral tale colliding, and often yielding, against the bounds of human frailty. Kieslowski crafts each episode with a distinctive signature, creating serenely indelible, spare, and poetic imagery. Each of the ten episodes of the series is a profound observation on the trials and tribulations of everyday life, reflected in complex ways - direct and abstruse - but all fundamentally, and infalliably, human.

Thou shalt watch these films...
Like most people I thought that Kieslowski's famous 'Three Colours' trilogy was the director's masterpiece. Life-altering though these films were, I now know I was wrong.

Because the 'Dekalog' is simply devastating. Each film is a profound meditation on the themes of love, loss, time and chance, among a whole host of other things.

Set in a Warsaw housing estate at the tail-end of the 1980's, each attempts to explain the complexities of what it means to be human: to lose a child, to be spurned by a prospective lover, to be sentenced to death [as, of course, we all are].

These films could only have been made by a man with a supreme faith in humankind, a faith that, as the films progess, we learn has come to supplant any belief in the supernatural or God himself.

Brilliant.

Brilliant films, mediocre DVD
While Dekalog is undoubtedly one of the great achievements of cinema, the Electric Eye DVDs could be far better. Although the transfer is adequate, it is apparently not from the original prints or broadcast videotape; the English subtitles are on the print itself and cannot therefore be turned off (and, of course, there are no original Polish-language subtitles); and like too many DVDs, the layer changes occur in the middle of scenes rather than between them. Worst of all, the original opening and closing credits have been replaced with a kitschy graphic montage (in which the T in "commandments" is a Christian cross, which suggests at best a crass misunderstanding of the films) and the Polish names are displayed without the appropriate accents.