Blind Chance (Przypadek)

 

Director Krzysztof Kieślowski (center)

BLIND CHANCE (Przypadek)           A                                                                                     aka: The Accident                                                                                                                Poland  (122 mi)  1981  d: Krzysztof Kieślowski

I don’t really know why there wasn’t any true description of Poland in the 1970’s in the other arts.  There wasn’t even a proper description of it in literature, and literature is easier to produce than film.  It’s not subject to censorship to the same degree although individual writers or individual books might be.  Yet films offered the best description of Poland.  At the end of 1970’s I realized that this description was limited, that we had reached these limits and that there was no point in describing this world any further.  A result is ‘Blind Chance,’ which is no longer a description of the outside world but rather of the inner world.  It’s a description of the powers which meddle with our fate, which push us one way or another.                                      —Krzysztof Kieślowski, 11 October* film & talk: Krzysztof Kieślowski – Blind Chance ...

Poland has the unfortunate distinction of having been invaded in 1939 by Nazi Germany from the West while also by Russia days later from the East, becoming the center of the Holocaust during the war, where Auschwitz will forever be linked with one of the worst atrocities in human history.  The population experienced horrific oppression by both occupying forces, with the Russians eventually prevailing afterwards, yet the aftermath left a moral void that still reverberates today, though Polish artists today enjoy Western-style freedom.  Context is essential with this film, as the director was born into the Poland of WWII, where it took him three tries to gain acceptance into the Łódź Film School, while this film is a product of the political anxiety of its time, going hand-in-hand with the long-exiled Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz (the prize awarded a year prior to the making of this film) and his book entitled The Captive Mind, a study of the capitulation of artists to the demands of Stalinism, as Krzysztof Kieślowski is one of the supreme artists in cinema and Polish history, where this revelatory work early in his career beautifully speaks to the malaise of a nation, introducing prevalent themes that are expanded in his later efforts, shot during the Russian communist occupation, yet remains timeless and strikingly modernist.  This film illuminates the intersection of fate, coincidence, and choice, suggesting chance rules our lives as much as choice does, examining how a single innocuous event can irrevocably alter our lives forever, offering three distinctly different outcomes in the life of a young medical student as he runs to catch a train in Łódź to Warsaw, none of which lead to a desirable result.  In one he joins the communist party, hoping to make an impact, defining himself by his commitment to the cause, yet he inadvertently harms the ones he loves the most, in another he’s arrested and sent to a labor camp where he bands together with associates he meets in an underground movement resisting the communist authority, yet is thoroughly ineffective, while in the third he returns to his life in Łódź and becomes a family man, establishing a successful medical career, yet he’s completely apolitical, refusing to take sides, nonetheless his life is deeply impacted in ways outside his control.  In each he establishes a different group of friends (with actors revolving into different roles), a different career, a different love interest, and takes on decidedly different political views, yet none bring him happiness.  Influenced by Fassbinder’s THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1978), yet giving rise to Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (Lolo Rennt) (1998), Kieślowski developed innovative narrative forms and stylistic methods to address pressing existential, moral, and political issues that reflected conditions in Poland at the time, living under the repressive Stalinist machinations of communism, a kind of outdated, old-world relic that transplanted itself to Poland, leaving few options, as individual free will in a totalitarian society is simply steamrolled out of existence, easily crushed under relentless pressure to conform.  Kieślowski began his career making short black and white documentaries, yet concluded making sumptuously elegant features, committed early on to the principles of realism, where this film reflects the moral dilemma of life under communism, where there really is no choice at all, as bowing down to the pressures of authority is the only available option, yet each new generation seeks an alternative path, one that doesn’t yet exist, overwhelmed by the absurdities of existence, as totalitarianism dominates every aspect of one’s life, where being suspicious of your neighbors is an everyday reality.  Ordinary people’s lives were constantly under pressure, followed and surveilled by the police or their thugs, apartments routinely ransacked searching for seditious activity, arrested and accused of crimes you did not commit, confessing what you know about others to police in hopes of alleviating some of that strain is often the one and only option.  Although the movie was made in 1981 on the eve of martial law, whereupon it was immediately banned, it had its premiere in 1987 in a censored form, screening at the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes (initially rejected as the work of a “local artist”), as the delay was caused by state-imposed censorship due to the film’s political content.  A recent restoration has returned the film to its original form, with one brief censored section of a police assault missing altogether, yet the sound remains.  The collapse of communism in 1989 was a major turning point, as films prior to that were all motivated by the strain of life under communism.  While other Polish filmmakers like Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Zanussi struggled to find funding and relevant subject material after 1989, Kieślowski’s career, long undervalued outside Poland, flourished, suddenly regarded as the vanguard of Eastern European art cinema, a worthy heir to Tarkovsky, discovering transnational cultural productions, where the worldwide acclaim for his film The Decalogue (Dekalog) (1988) led to international coproductions, with his last four films made largely outside of Poland, and predominantly in French, while broadening the ethical and metaphysical questions of his earlier films.   

During the communist period, Polish cinema served as an antidote to the propaganda of state television, never more strongly than the cinema of moral anxiety of the late 70’s, also known as cinema of moral unrest, a grouping of blunt yet stylistically unembellished films that brought attention to the social ills of the nation, where people find themselves isolated and alone in a corrupt and dishonest society, yet the period was short-lived due to the imposition of martial law in 1981.  Andrzej Wajda paid homage to Kieślowski, claiming “When we were lost and confused during martial law, he alone knew which path to follow.”  His methods, a pronounced existential strain both stylistically and narratively, exposing the uncertainties of life and the impossibility of judging the lives of others, had a profound influence on other European directors, perhaps none more than the austere work of Austrian director Michael Haneke, emotionally spare, fractured in perspective, using long takes to accentuate a heightened realism.  After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the formation of the European Union, Haneke’s films explored the increasing isolation of the individual in a fragmented Europe, with Kieślowski’s THREE COLORS TRILOGY (1993-94) sharing similar themes with Haneke’s Code Unknown (Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages) (2000), both sharing the same French actress Juliette Binoche, with both offering an insightful, modernist perspective of Europe from an informed Central European identity.  Like his earlier works, this film has a documentary quality, yet its realization of a cyclical Sisyphus syndrome where the central protagonist is doomed to repeated mistakes succinctly sums up the Cinema of Moral Anxiety era, with its irrationality of existence, where the search for hope and meaning is absurdly thwarted by a morally bankrupt and dehumanizing system, where one lives and dies meaninglessly, no matter the circumstances.  Kieślowski places great faith in chance encounters, reminding us of the significance this plays in our lives, in the determination of our character, even in who we meet, and how we meet them, considering all the possible “what if?” variables that might have gone another way, yet each life is a mysterious intersection with the hands of fate, where this film is a reminder that had things gone differently at some point we could be living entirely different lives.  A disjointed series of seemingly unrelated incidents start the film in a shockingly well-made opening montage, providing something of an abstract historical backstory connecting the memory of the past to the present, including traumatic childhood incidents (some remembered inaccurately) and a primal scream evoking a terrifying sense of helplessness and despair, though their interconnectedness is not actually realized until the final shot.  Given a grim, social realist look by cinematographer Krzysztof Pakulski, his camera is cleverly utilized, more active than previous works, displaying a sensual sensibility, mixing eroticism with a warm humanism, but through it all Witek (Bogusław Linda) remains optimistic in leading a good life, an apparent reference to Voltaire’s Candide, whose sole existence is guided by living the best of all possible worlds.  In each of three narratives, he tries to make the best ethical choices, seeking to live meaningfully, where if he cannot change the world, he can at least do his best not to let the world change him, which under a totalitarian regime would be a remarkable achievement, yet the intrusion of reality as an unstoppable force intervenes each time defying his efforts, leaving him disillusioned and heartbroken, casting the entire film under a darkened shadow of negativity.  Each segment opens with renewed possibilities full of hopes and promise, where it looks like Witek is in a position to choose his own destiny, as if the future is in his hands, yet he gradually gets caught up in a chain of events, accidents, and misfortunes that leave him exhausted, disappointed, and morally depleted.  There is a pronounced element of fatalism, one of the most toxic side-effects of living in a totalitarian system, as it dangerously pollutes the subconscious, perhaps best represented by a scene on the train where Witek follows a prisoner to the restroom, offering him a chance to escape, but the prisoner instead capitulates and willingly returns back to the authorities.  Throughout the film, however, this apparent disillusion with humanity is met with an equally mystifying faith in it, a remarkable characteristic from this director. 

While Poland is a devoutly Catholic country, Kieślowski was an agnostic, yet according to fellow Polish director Agnieszka Holland, who knew him well, “Krzysztof is somebody who had an incredibly deep need to believe in something transcendental.  He did believe, but at the same time he wasn’t really a member of any church, and his relationships toward the religious were less theological than ethical and metaphysical.”  Kieślowski reveals in the 1993 book Kieślowski On Kieślowski, a conversation with Danusia Stok, “given the limitation of our knowledge and the imperfection of our intelligence, there’s no way we can gauge the reality or the gravity of sin, the extent of guilt.”  What this suggests is that the only way we can escape the Sisyphean futility of utter human despair is to accept, at least hypothetically, the existence of a metaphysical point of view where things make more sense, as otherwise we will never be able to get out of the suffocating framework of “chance.”  Interestingly, one of the predominant themes of the film is stated early on from Werner (Tadeusz Łomnicki, a former member of the Party’s Central Committee), an old communist Witek meets on the train, who articulates this notion of the exhaustion of hope:

Every generation has need of light.  It needs to know, or to believe that the world can be a better place.  This need…is like a drug.  Early in life, it brings joy, as light seems near, within reach.  At life’s end, it brings bitterness, as the light has grown distant.  During those 40 years, I lived through many things, and today I see it more distant than before. […] But…life without this hope, without this bitterness, wouldn’t be worth living.

It’s curious that at the time this film was finally released in Poland in 1987, along with several other previously banned films, Polish film critic Tadeusz Sobolewski described it as “a souvenir of the past,” viewing it as a “pessimistic philosophical parable on human destiny shaped by occurrences beyond individual control,” relatable, supposedly, only to those still behind the Iron Curtain.  Yet the film is not some outdated nihilistic relic, actually transcending any notion of time and national boundaries precisely because it could come to represent any point of living under oppression, where according to Dennis Lim’s Criterion essay, Blind Chance: The Conditional Mood, “the failures of the system remain secondary to the human-scale dilemmas of the individuals trapped within it.”  Witek in all three segments is basically the same person, a kind of everyman who is morally upright, honest, and virtuous, trying to make the best of his life, where he’s a decent human being irrespective of his politics or life choices.  What’s quite astonishing, particularly in comparison with Run Lola Run (Lolo Rennt), is that moral intent matters, and that ethical choices make a profound difference whether advocated by the great Russian novelists Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky or the Romantic Polish tradition of glorifying national martyrs, who are revered for believing in causes greater than themselves.  It is inevitable that all choices lead to death, where fate and death are interlinked, yet Kieślowski’s next film NO END (1985) is intrinsically a meditation on death and its haunting presence that continues to linger in our lives.  Yet what distinguishes this film is how essential ethical choice becomes in the human experience, elevating not only this film but the overall stature of Kieślowski as a filmmaker, as his films always feature philosophical journeys into the human spirit while demonstrating a concern for the moral and ethical implications of human action.  Accordingly, he confirmed his status as a major contemporary director with The Decalogue (Dekalog) (1988), an ambitious series of ten hour-long films funded by Polish television, telling stories loosely based on the Ten Commandments, yet set in the heart of the modern existentialist world.  This ambiguous criss-cross narrative surpasses, to a large extent, the formulaic restrictions of the cinema of moral unrest by introducing larger-than-life themes into the equation, becoming a philosophical quest for knowledge, an internal odyssey of changing configurations, where Witek’s life revolves around three women, Czuszka (Bogusława Pawelec), his first love, Werka (Marzena Trybała), the sister of a childhood friend, and finally Olga (Monika Gozdzik), a fellow medical student that he marries.  Yet in such an over-controlled authoritative society, making no choice at all is synonymous with the status quo, as it offers no resistance to the continued offenses of the state, where Witek’s success is achieved at the expense of others, with the director highlighting the randomness of choice in an amusing scene showing a Slinky on the stairs, coming to life as it gracefully slithers effortlessly downward step-by-step until it comes to a stop at the bottom where it “looks dead.”  A point of emphasis should be made regarding an isolated scene where two jugglers appear in an open courtyard, with Witek watching them in awe, as their skill in generating a neverending back-and-forth stream of balls in the air is simply unfathomable.  The significance of this scene may easily be overlooked, as it’s not really part of the overall narrative, but appears to stand on its own in the third segment, yet it has major ramifications.  Witek is told “They’ve been practicing for at least ten years…Seems no one in the world can juggle like that.”  What they represent is a vision of excellence bordering on perfection, an example of what people can achieve if they truly dedicate themselves, representing a supreme form of inner freedom.  Regardless of the political stratum, these two are unaffected, seemingly capable of juggling like that forever, as they are masters of their craft, where nothing breaks their concentration.  This may be a moment of enlightenment for Witek, perhaps envisioning himself as the best doctor he can become in his profession, where the pursuit of excellence is its own just reward.  In the second segment, Witek makes a religious transformation and asks to be baptized, yet still questions the existence of God.  This is arguably the most intensely religious sequence in the entire Kieślowski repertoire, as he breaks out into prayer afterwards, but asks only for God to “be there.”  While God may not have shown up yet in his life, this prayer sequence insures that there’s a place waiting for him in the future and he’s warning God to prepare for being present in that moment.  Even if only an abstract metaphysical notion, even if non-existent, God still plays a central role in our lives.  It’s an extraordinary inner awareness that emerges into the heart of the film, which is an inner dialogue we have with ourselves and those higher powers of our own choosing.  It serves as the Bressonian moment of transcendence, a cinematic connection to Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), one of the most unique of religious expressions.  While not as polished and as ravishingly beautiful as his later works, this gritty effort is remarkably complex and powerful, showing rare insight into a moment in history while setting the tone for the films that would follow, providing the emotional and dramatic genesis of his career.   

The Decalogue (Dekalog)

THE DECALOGUE (Dekalog) – made for TV              A

Poland  (10 episodes about 55 mi each –  562 mi)  1988-89  d:  Krzysztof Kieślowski    The Decalogue 

An especially good desert island selection, one to have with you if you’re ever stuck alone for long periods of time bored on a desert island with more than enough time to contemplate one’s existence.  Completed in 1988, but not released in the USA until some 8 years later, DEKALOG is considered one of the key works in contemporary cinema, featuring ten segments, each representing one of the Ten Commandments, which are never shown or referenced anywhere in the film, forcing each viewer to explore further on their own.  Two of these shorter segments have been expanded into full-length features, A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE (1988) and A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING (1988), the latter winning a Jury Prize at Cannes and is considered one of the most powerful films ever made about the death penalty.  Kieślowski directed each episode, co-written by Kieślowski’s longtime collaborator Krzysztof Piesiewicz, but used 9 different cinematographers to express a change in the way the material is observed and presented, featuring extraordinary music written by Zgibniew Priesner, which is always soft, graceful, hauntingly beautiful, evoking a sublime minimalist elegance, providing for Kieślowski what Peer Raben provided for Fassbinder, the musical poetry that underscores such superb dramatic imagery. 

This is a ten part, 562 minute updated modern day morality play that explores the timeless moral issues of human existence through ten contemporary tales, each loosely based on one of the Ten Commandments, yet is so deeply woven into the fabric of everyday life that the connection never feels clear.  Originally produced for Polish television, yet initially shown out of sequence over the course of a year, where episode #10 aired first in June 1989, followed by #1 December 1989, with all the rest following in May and June 1990, this brilliant series of ten separate but subtly intertwining films transcends the boundaries of film and TV.  Distinguished by its searing realism, this is as excruciatingly personal as filmmaking gets, featuring humans on the threshold of life altering decisions, filled with pensive moments along with plenty of quiet and empty spaces, featuring unbelievable acting and exceptionally spare musical scoring, making this feel uniquely original, simply an exceptional and deeply personal viewing experience.  Made on a $100,000 budget, shot at the same Warsaw high-rise housing complex, each episode features new lead actors, but occasionally several may overlap into multiple episodes, including a silent character (Artur Barcis) seen in the opening shot who continually re-appears in nearly every segment, often humorously, as he’s seen several times carrying a kayak on his back, always remaining wordless, but he’s also present at significant moments, like the invisible presence of Christ or perhaps an expression of one’s conscience.  He never figures into the outcome or noticeably affects anyone’s decision, but simply observes humans and bears silent witness as they live their lives, perhaps the closest we get to an explicit presence of God. 

There are recurring images and themes that appear throughout, such as the same exterior housing complex, continually shot from different angles, both high level and low, where we become familiar with the sidewalk entrances as well as the neighborhood nearby, where neighbors often meet and chat or simply pass by one another in a chilly silence.  We also become familiar with interior rooms, often lit by a lone lamp at night, where the space feels cramped and confined, but also warm and cozy, with elevated windows overlooking the sidewalks below, at other times feeling threatening and inhospitable due to the insufferable behavior of the occupants.  Taxi’s or cars appear throughout, highlighting the view of the passengers inside who may be engaging in conversation as the streets and buildings of Warsaw pass by.  Again, the range of expression differs from casually familiar to deeply hostile, but always we seem to discover people having discussions in enclosed spaces, such as rooms, doorways, hallways, lecture halls, offices, taxi’s, trains, hospitals, airports, closets, courtrooms, jail cells, or kitchens, where the feeling one gets after awhile is how small a creature humans are when they live their lives, always confining themselves to small interior spaces, shown to humorous effect by the final episode where iron bars, an alarm system and a vicious attack dog cannot protect this precious space from unwanted invasion.          

DEKALOG has a connection to Christmas, much of it shot in wintry conditions with traces of snow on the ground, but often in the dark of night, especially the early segments, #1 and especially #3, where it may initially feel like the blind leading the blind, especially considering the devastating consequences of the initial episode, where elation so quickly turns to sadness, a common theme that permeates throughout the films.  Each segment has the feel of a short story highlighting the human drama, shown with exquisite detail, where there are sharp twists and turns in the road, usually leading to the unexpected, where decisions have consequences, where oftentimes the people seem to be living their lives at differing speeds, where by the time they catch up to understanding their situation, it has quickly changed, and they always feel one step behind, which is especially evident in #9.  Probably the most astonishing cinema happens between episodes # 4 – 6, perhaps the most challenging and deeply profound as well, where the latter two were made into feature films, but #4 has an exquisite elegance that speaks of pure poetry.  Often led by the performances, the dramatic power of each segment is quickly realized, where the viewer is pulled into a particular human dilemma where difficult choices have to be made, where there is no right or wrong, but simply impossible choices that have uniquely personal ramifications, much like the surreal aftermath of Kurosawa’s RAN (1985), humans at the precipice, alone against a vast unknown.   

In our fast-paced, modern age, God may be harder to find, and harder to believe in, but through these brilliantly unique observations, this film at least demonstrates through a superb cinematic structure where God has been, and where, if one looks hard enough, God may still be found.

#1.  I am the Lord, thy God. Thou shalt have no other God but me.  The first 3 all seem to take place at night, or in the dark, with a cold and chilling effect.  Listed as the saddest of them all by Ebert, though #5 and #7 are hauntingly sad as well, this features a close father and son relationship (Henryk Baranowski and Wojciech Klata), where the father is a renowned physics instructor, where the favorite game the two play together is solving problems through the use of computers, giving them a rush of excitement when they get the right answer.  However, there’s no guarantee they’ll find the right answer, as knowledge is elusive, where there’s no accounting for unforeseen circumstances, like stormy weather, quick wind gusts, or changes in fate, determining factors that play into the possibility that humans may err in accurately identifying the problem in the first place.  This is precisely what happens with devastating results, as computers cannot take the place of God, where despite their reputation for accuracy and consistency, they’re never guaranteed to make the right decision.  Tell that to the astronauts who are circling the moon. 

#2.  Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.  This is deeply unsettling and dramatically powerful, featuring a terrific performance from a strong-willed middle aged woman (Krystyna Janda) who has to make a fateful decision about her pregnancy, wondering whether to terminate the pregnancy (by another man) and stay with her potentially terminally ill spouse, who is infertile, or have the baby and run away with her new man in a new life.  Set in a dark and somber setting, the background of the doctor (Aleksander Bardini) is presented simultaneously as the woman, revealing secret personal information that may play into the decision, where the director leaves relevant information shrouded in a mysterious ambiguity of multiple possibilities. 

#3.  Honor the Sabbath Day. Taking place on Christmas Eve, the roads are snowy, used to a chilling wintry effect, where a taxi driver (Daniel Olbrychski) is lured away from his family by the sight of a mysterious woman (Maria Pakulnis) during church services.  A former lover, she now asks for his help in locating her missing husband.  Largely built around the theme of temptation, the two play a cat and mouse game all night long, where the urgency of their mission gets sidetracked by apparent unfinished business between the two of them.  The episode intermingles several different Commandments, as the two seem to get lost in their own adult Alice in Wonderland netherworld where perhaps different rules may apply.   

#4.  Honor thy Father and thy Mother.  It’s not until #4 that the quiet intensity of internal silence begins overwhelming the viewer, featuring a spectacular performance by the daughter (Adriana Biedrzynska), a 20-year old theater student who is remarkably uninhibited, but also dangerously curious as she grows intensely attracted to a letter left in her widowed father’s drawer (Janusz Gajos) that says “To be opened in the event of my death.”  The interior world has expansive capabilities, fragile, unpredictable, and quietly explosive, like watching a dramatic rendition of The Glass Menagerie, eerily quiet with a haunting power, among the best uses of music in the entire series, and profoundly moving.  Amusingly there is a graphic Winston cigarette poster at her bedside, with another Marlboro reference in the film (too noticeably placed not to see), also an amusing appearance by our silent Christ-like character who comes out of the nearby river carrying his kayak on his back. 

#5.  Thou shalt not kill.  The most bone-chilling episode of all, shot by Slawomir Idziak using a different tone than all the rest, sepia colored, like old photographs, but graphically realistic, with another blistering performance by the murderer, Jacek (Miroslaw Baka).  While we watch him sulk and slink around the edges of the city with utter banality, like some kind of gutter animal, this is arguably the best treatise on capital punishment ever filmed.  Intermixing a parallel story of a young law student (Krzysztof Globisz) making his carefully considered argument against capital punishment, Jacek commits a heinously brutal attack on a defenseless cabdriver, taking several minutes of real time using a near documentary style technique to capture the full impact of the gruesome act.  Showing only brief trial accounts, exhausting all appeals, Jacek is sentenced to death, where the final act before carrying out his sentencing is offering him a cigarette, especially ironic as that may have been a contributing factor in the death of the the filmmaker, an unintended comment on another murderous habit.  The second killing, the one committed by the state, is equally horrific.  Interestingly a bicycle rider drives past as the murder is being committed without ever suspecting anything—expanded later into A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING.   

#6.  Thou shalt not commit adultery.  While several episodes point to this Commandment, this may be the most elegantly presented, a variation on Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW (1954), changing the murder clues in Hitchcock to subtle hints of love, which are equally haunting and mysterious, often with similar disturbing consequences.  The quiet, near wordless pensiveness of this sequence is highly appealing, as are the performances of the two leads, where young postal worker Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) becomes infatuated with Magda (Grasznya Szapolowska), a free spirited and sexually promiscuous artist living in the building directly across from his, where he sits alone in the dark and uses a telescope to spy on her.  Their knowledge and understanding of one another goes through a total transformation, just not at the same time, where feelings get lost and misplaced, but the honesty and quest for needed sincerity was never more appealing than here—expanded later into A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE (which, by the way, has a different ending).

#7.  Thou shalt not steal.  Perhaps the most heartbreaking, this feels like a variation on the fairly tale of Little Red Riding Hood, as it features a young child dressed in a bright red coat who is eventually eaten by the wolf.  This little girl Ania (Katarzyna Piwowarczyk) was unsuspectingly raised by her domineering grandmother (Anna Polony), who informed her she was the mother, and that her real mother Majka (Maja Barelkowska) was her older sister—all to prevent the embarrassing scandal of Majka’s unwed, teenage pregnancy with one of her teachers who actually works for the grandmother.  Instead of going to grandmother’s house in the woods, in this version, the child is stuck in the woods with a wolf disguised as a grandmother.  Given an almost music box musical theme, the featured element here is Majka feeling chained, like a prisoner, where escape is the only option, but at what cost?  The obvious question is whether you can steal something that already belongs to you, though the most anguishing theft is Majka’s motherhood.  

#8.  Thou shalt not bear false witness.  “People don’t like witnesses to their humiliation, even bricks and mortar.”  A college ethics professor (Maria Kosciakowska) receives a visitor from the past (Teresa Marczewska), one she offered to shelter during the war when she was just a 6-year old Jewish child seeking protection, on the condition that she would convert to Catholicism, which she did, but the professor and her husband rescinded their offer, forcing the girl to go elsewhere to almost certain death.  40 years later, still haunted by the memory, the prodigal daughter has returned to discover her lost childhood, still curious about the circumstances surrounding that decision.  Perhaps of all the episodes, this one outlines the moral dilemmas of making difficult choices, even recounting in class exactly the same circumstances of the pregnant women in episode #2, an example of ethical hell.  As it turns out, all these intersecting lives live nearby, each with their own haunting stories and challenging memories. 

#9.  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.  A husband (Piotr Machalica) is told at the outset from his own surgeon that he has an unspecified medical condition causing impotency that will not allow him to ever have sex again, which his wife (Ewa Blasczyk) accepts with tenderness, but the husband is racked with guilt and self loathing, knowing he can’t give his attractive wife what she needs, encouraging her to find a lover, and then seeing lovers behind every phone call and piece of paper he finds, becoming overly suspicious and paranoid, resorting to methods of peeping as in episode #6, only without the developing love, instead lurking in the shadows with the crashing darkness of suspicion and doubt.  When he discovers she is really having an affair, he grows suicidal and unstable.  During a planned meeting where she ends it with her lover, he’s discovered afterwards hiding in a closet, where they vow to start trusting one another, but they’re never trusting or being honest with each other at the same time, always out of synch, allowing doubt and the darkness to cloud their judgment, nearly destroying one another, all of which could likely have been prevented had they simply trusted one another from the beginning.   

#10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.  The only comedy from the group, about a bumbling pair of brothers, the older and more conservative Jerzy (Jerzy Stuhr) and young rock star Artur (Zbigniew Zamachowski) who sings in the punk band City Death, whose only skill is screwing things up and making matters worse, yet they are clueless about their singular path to ruin, aided and abetted by each other’s wacky ideas.  In episode #8, we saw an elderly neighbor excited about a recent purchase of rare stamps, a series of Zeppelins from 1931.  As we discover here, the recently deceased happens to be these two screwball brother’s father and his notorious stamp collection is renowned throughout Poland as the finest collection throughout the nation, worth several million dollars if kept intact, which sends shivers down the spines of these guys who were obviously his father’s two biggest disappointments in life.  Never having anything of value, the two install iron bars on the windows and buy a vicious attack dog for protection, believing they are invincible.  Shady stamp dealers lure them with a stamp so rare it can’t even be sold, as it’s known to be stolen, so its whereabouts remain a secret, so rare it eluded their father throughout his lifetime, worth a kidney if interested.  “Am I supposed to give a kidney for a stamp?”  This kind of black humor matches the punk rock nihilism that opens and closes the film, ironically displaying contrary impulses to everything that’s come before, an interesting way to rather amusingly bring the series to a close.