The Decalogue: An Exploration in Ten Parts

‘The commandments work not like science but like art; they are instructions for how to paint a worthy portrait with our lives.’ –Roger Ebert

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that even as recently as two years ago, I not only knew practically nothing about film theory, but I probably hadn’t seen more than a dozen movies in the preceding five years. I’m not just speaking of trips to the cinema either, which are incredibly rare for someone like me who find sitting closely with strangers in the dark an especially troubling proposition, but I didn’t watch movies on DVD or television much either. I had attention problems for sure, but the medium wasn’t one of great appeal for me.

Last year I took a class in film theory and feminism, and the last few months have seen me make small strides in integrating the medium of film and television into my research interests in remediation of the digital. I watch a film almost every day, and while I can’t seem to read a novel anymore, I have no issue watching a fictional film. My own personal research in both film and cultural criticism has led me to read quite a bit of Roger Ebert, which in turn has spurred me to watch films I otherwise would not have, especially in the areas of foreign cinema.

With a desire to use this space to do something a little different and perhaps a bit more personal, I have decided to watch The Decalogue, the acclaimed 1989 ten-part television series from Poland, which was directed and co-conceived by Krzysztof Kieslowski, and weigh in each night with thoughts on that episode in particular and the greater moralistic implications in general, as the mood strikes me. I’ve never done anything like this before, so it is a bit intimidating, but I feel it will help me work through my own thoughts on the series while perhaps serving as a blueprint for how to do reviews that are meaningful to me as well as to an audience.

Each film in Kieslowski’s series is based upon one of the Ten Commandments and are based within a large housing project in Warsaw, where characters from the different films appear in others as there is often some relationship between people living in such a tight community. Rather than focusing on the difficulties in Poland at the time, the director focuses instead on moral issues that have a more universal, and therefore timeless, appeal. Much of what I have read about the series suggests that the stories are populated not by characters from a typical Hollywood drama who have a problem they most overcome, but instead with characters who are like real adults: happy with some things, sad about others, but with complex motivations and at times contrary inclinations.

What is so exciting about watching the film and providing commentary here is that I have no real notion of how it will go. What texts will I seek out to enhance my understanding of The Decalogue, and how will I present them to the audience? How much will I be personally affected by what is shown on the screen? What sorts of discussions may be generated by such an experiment? Such questions are what makes such an endeavor so thrilling, and I hope some of you find yourselves engaged in what transpires.

Let's Talk About Love by Carl Wilson

While I may never forgive Carl Wilson for getting that Titanic pan flute music stuck in my head for the better part of a week, it is his fantastic book on the French Canadian singer Celine Dion that has me doing the unthinkable: getting me to reconsider why it is that I dislike the pop star. Let’s Talk About Love is part of Continuum’s 33 1/3 series about various record albums (I read a dry one about Let It Be by Steve Matteo last month), but this book isn’t really about the Dion album or the singer at all. Instead, it uses her as a prism by which to investigate the nature of taste itself.

What motivates aesthetic judgment? Why does a woman who has sold tens of millions of record albums cause so many others to run screaming when they hear her voice? Wilson compares the ideas of Kant, who would have us believe that taste involves a universal instinct for beauty-assessment, with those of Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist who maintains that taste is never disinterested, but instead a form of cultural capital. In other words, those who hate Celine Dion are not merely making an aesthetic choice; it is an ethical decision made in order to elevate oneself above her fans, who tend to be poor, middle-aged, white women from Middle America. While we use what we like to define who we are and who we are not, we do the same with what we dislike. And as much as this bothers me on a personal level, the (perhaps) subconscious elevation of myself above others, I find it to be almost inarguably true.

Though Wilson does undergo a sort of journey as the narrative progresses, seeing Dion in Vegas and comparing the messages in her songs to his own life as he endures a painful divorce, he never is won over, becoming a fan. But what he does come to believe by the book’s conclusion is that we should move toward a new sort of ‘democratic’ criticism, where we aren’t so much open to all sorts of new ideas, but rather where we refuse to indulge in those cultural capital instincts that elevate us above another taste set, no matter what it is. While Wilson seems to limit himself to the medium of music, such principles remain applicable to just about anything that is judged on taste.

Pop criticism has always tried to articulate the genius behind the underappreciated or devalued. And while there are now canons in rock, rap, and country (not to mention other media like film and television), why should Celine Dion be beyond our capacity for praise. What Wilson accomplishes with Let’s Talk About Love did not make me like Dion’s music, but did help me understand what its appeal might be to others. By defining schmaltz as ‘an unprivate portrait of how private feeling is currently conceived,’ a label that is slapped on Dion’s music by all sorts of people including me, Wilson is able to turn the definition onto other genres of music. After all, he writes, ‘you could say that punk rock is anger’s schmaltz.’