"Dekalog" Dekalog, szesc (1990)

Director:

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Writers:

Krzysztof Piesiewicz (written by) &
Krzysztof Kieslowski (written by)

TV Series:

"Dekalog" (1989)

Original Air Date:

8 June 1990 (Season 1, Episode 6)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

"Thou shalt not commit adultery" - a shorter, scaled-down version of 'A Short Film About Love' , with a less complex plot and a different ending...

Plot Keywords:

Polish

Cast

Grazyna Szapolowska	...	Magda
Olaf Lubaszenko	...	Tomek
Stefania Iwinska	...	Godmother
Artur Barcis	...	Young Man
Stanislaw Gawlik	...	Postman
Piotr Machalica	...	Roman
Rafal Imbro	...	Bearded Man
Jan Piechocinski	...	Blond Man
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Malgorzata Rozniatowska	...	Angry Postmaster

Also Known As:

Dekalog: Decalogue Six: Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery (#1.6) (International: English title)
Dekalog: Dekalog, sześć (#1.6) (Poland)

Runtime:

58 min | USA:60 min | Argentina:60 min

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:16

Filming Locations:

Warsaw, Poland

Company:

Polish TV

Movie Connections:

Edited from Krótki film o milosci (1988)

A story is based on the eye's fictitious power

This story is based on the EYE'S FICTITIOUS POWER, meant as a subtle and perverse kind of interference with our personal lives in the name of aims in clear contrast with every rules for civil living. Intended as a strict and precarious consequence of the obvious impossibility of coming to terms with one's own frustrated ambition, subjected to under-valuate the human interrelations dynamics. Acting as a comforting heaven-sent shelter from the dangers of the main character's hermetically sealed world, as an ambiguous way to take up a defensive position and give vent to the increased capability of the faculty of sight artfully increased at other people's expenses, whose privacy is being violated in their own homes.

The Dekalog 6, "Thou shalt not commit adultery", a shorter version of "A Short Film About Love", rotates around the barycenter of Tomek's room, a world apart from where he looks around epistemologically in search of some contiguous reality analyzed under his anomalous point of view, purified of all normal human contacts, always focused on Magda, his "bright" object of desire, incapable of facing her with open heart for fear of tasting the bitter flavor of frustration. Conscious of his aleatory capacity of interacting with reality by phone, Tomek may be considered a living symbol of the human inability to perform the least act of love. His disturbing condition of abusive collector of undue slices of reality is doomed to reveal all its limits owing to wrong synergism between his will power immersed in totalizing choices and the frailty of his immature mind deprived of any sense of security given up for lost. So his "bright" object of desire assumes the same solidity of an image reflected in the glass, completely devoid of all real consistence, even if endowed with a paralyzing erotic charge able to melt virtual juvenile ardors like snow in the sun.

Kieslowski shows here an unusual tendency toward reddish tones of the same color of that insane passion which drives Tomek to the perpetration of sexual impure acts forbidden by the sixth commandment, together with Magda, charming thirty-year-old woman affected by exhibitionist mania and late repentance for her sins, opaque and unlikely reminiscence of the evangelic Mary Magdalene. The red color assumes the natural function of dramatic passion, dominating the scene completely such as in the final chapter of the colors trilogy. But while in "Trois couleurs: Rouge" its presence is mixed with a sense of detachment and with skeptical attitude towards every passionate involvements, in "Dekalog 6" one can perceive from afar the heat of the blazing flame ready to burn out suddenly as soon as the real nature of love, fleeting and deceptive, can be unmasked.