Paige Bier_February 10_The Decalogue

Midrash, an ancient commentary of Hebrew Scriptures, can be related to the Ten Commandments in order to understand how the medium challenges us to find meaning. The tradition of Midrash focuses on biblical texts in order for the individual to “focus on the deep meaning and look to a comparative meaning”. The purposes of these visual mediums are used for the audience to go beyond the text of these scripts and to be able to connect their own lives to the Ten Commandments. Specific visual mediums are used in Krystof Kieslowski’s film Decalogue to show the audience an individual interpretation of the Ten Commandments. The two separate Decalogue clips were a representation of one of the Ten Commandments.  The first clip displayed the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and the second clip displayed the sixth commandment: “Thou shalt not kill”.

            There are visuals used in the first Decalogue clip used as a symbol in order to bridge the gap of understanding of the first commandment. As said by Stanley Kubrick, he uses dramatic action in the story for the “audience to discover what’s really going on rather than being told”. In the first film, the little boy asks his Father, “What is death?” The father responds with a biological reference (“the heart stops pumping blood”) over a spiritual reference (relating to God, after-life, the soul, etc.). His Father is very stubborn and relies heavily in what can be calculated and measured; therefore, believing that he is always right and believing in no greater God. The visuals are used to form an emotional connection to the audience in order to convey the interpretation of the first commandment. The film destroys the arrogance of the Father and conveys, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” through the death of his little boy. Since the Father claimed his calculations were correct about the ice being strong enough to hold his son on the ice, the ice breaks proving that a greater God could only have corrupted these calculations. Relating back to Kubrick’s reflection on the Decalogue, “you never see the ideas coming and don’t realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart” can relate to the man who sits on the ice by the fire, without saying a word the entire film. The visual used in this situation is his emotion when he wipes a tear, and presents the question from the audience of whether or not he is a personification of God. Therefore, the purpose of Midrash is accomplished while the audience is left struggling to find the meaning behind these symbols to unravel the text of the first commandment.

Decalogue related to feeling by presenting emotion in the audience. Midrash was used to present such emotion. For example, in the second clip we viewed of the Decalogue that conveyed the meaning of the sixth commandment, mixed emotions were planted in the audience. When the main character mistreats most of the people he comes in contact with, the audience automatically believes he should get revenge. When the film shows the man murder the taxi driver, the way that they set up the scene with the taxi driver’s last words of  “child” and “wife” makes us feel sympathetic. The dramatic action of him killing the taxi driver with the rock allows the audience to feel sympathy for the taxi driver and hatred for the killer. Therefore, the emotions are installed by the way the action is presented. To go into more depth, if the man killed the taxi driver because he was in pain, dying from illness (with good intentions, knowing he would be happier in an after-life), we would view it differently than him killing him for no reason. In being faithful to the Ten Commandments, we automatically see killing as wrong, and later interpret it as a disloyalty to God and the Ten Commandments.  That is why Kieslowski says, “It very quickly became clear that these would be films about feelings and passions, because we knew that love, or the fear of death, or the pain caused by a needle-prick, are common to all people”. Meaning that Kieslowski was able to make the emotional connection because he knew the audience was familiar with the feelings of love, death, and pain.

In the second clip when the killer says, “They are all against me” and another man responds saying, “No, they are against what you did”, forced me to create a question. When do we draw the line for a bad deed to define a person as bad? Do you think one bad deed, such as murder, can define that person and their faith? Since the film allowed me to connect the Ten Commandments and how faithful my commitment is to God, I would say this film does work to contextualize and integrate the code into an individuals’ life. Both clips in the Decalogue related directly to one of the Ten Commandments, which automatically connected to my personal life, and my relationship with God. The purpose of life on Earth is to live for God and to worship Him above all of His creations. The ultimate meaning of eternity is conveyed through the Decalogue in relation to our faithful commitment to our relationship with God. This film displayed the affects of violating the Ten Commandments in order to convey life on Earth and its importance to your eternal journey.

Stanley Kubrick wrote the following in this regard in the the foreword to Kieslowski & Piesiewicz, Decalogue: The Ten Commandments, London: Faber & Faber, 1991, 

Bupe Okeowo

Kieslowski’s Decalogue is a 10 part series that allows us to visualize the commandments in modern day life. Each film allows us to see and experience what it means to disobey the commandments. Kieslowski’s work proposes that the commandments are not easily understood in modern day society because their meanings are vague or unclear. The use of film as a medium makes these meanings more understandable to us as viewers. Because of that, it works as a Midrash. In the first series we watched, it seemed as thought the computer was a symbol. The computer symbolized a false idol that the father was worshipping. While he did not actually physically worship the computer, the way he acted towards it displayed his idolism. He believed everything the computer said which even made it hard for him to believe that the ice had broken that one night. He places so much of his trust in it and that symbolized how we can believe and rely so much on material things more than our on faith and knowledge. Another commandment that was visualized was “Thou shall not kill” and “Thou shall not steal”. In the second film we watched, Jacek committed murder robbery for no reason at all. I found it interesting because, in a sense it was hypocritical at the end. Murder is a crime, yet they “murdered” Jacek at the end for doing the exact same thing. Does it make a difference whether the murder was court sanctioned or random? Also I saw a different side of Jacek before he was executed. Even thought he was a murderer, we saw the compassionate side of him when he was explaining the story of his sister. I think no matter what we have done, we are all human and we all feel the same pain.

John Tyler: The Decalogue

The Decalogue

In Krzysztof Kieslowski’s film “Decalogue”, he uses visual mediums to convey an interpretation of each of the ten commandments. The style of interpretation used by Kieslowski is Midrash, an ancient commentary of the Hebrew scriptures.  Midrash focuses on the deep meaning of the text as well as the comparative meanings surrounding it.  Kieslowski instills the film with visuals that cause the viewer to search for and struggle with the meaning themselves.  

One film is a Midrash of the first commandment “Set no gods before Me” where Kieslowski deploys symbolic imagery in order to invite the viewer into dramatic action of wrestling with the meaning behind the 1st commandment.  The short film ends with the death of the young boy which was an indirect consequence of his agnostic father’s fetishizatoin of the computer.  The father believed in only what could be measured and quantified thus he did not believe in God nor in any form of an afterlife.  Having believed in his calculations and formulas all his life, he could barely fathom that his son fell through the ice.  Even after watching his son being pulled out of the freezing water the father remains standing in shock and disbelief while everyone else sorrowfully kneels on the snow.  Immediately following the death of his son, Kieslowski includes several scenes of tears being shed whether it’s by the boy’s aunt, the stoic homeless man, and the wax running down the icon’s face.  This imagery acts as a powerful midrash of the 1st commandment by bringing deep emotion into the meaning of the text.  Not only does it place the viewer into the dramatic action by stirring up emotion from within but also in how the viewer is transmitted through an array of feelings.  In line with this, Rudolf Otto notes in The Idea of the Holy, “It is not that the actual feeling gradually changes in quality...but rather that I pass over to make the transition from one feeling to another as the circumstances change” (Otto, pg. 42-43).  The film stirs up emotions within the viewer.  However, it is the individual and not the feeling that undergoes transition.  

I interpret the tears to be an indication of the consequences of a broken commandment.  Since God deeply desires for us to worship Him and Him alone, our disloyalty can actually trouble God’s soul and bring Him grief.  Kieslowski is expanding upon the ramifications of idolatry.  We were created to worship God alone in which Saint Augustine states "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Therefore, the tears bridge a gap in our understanding by signifying the gravity of our actions committed against God’s desires.

Corinne Beale: The Decalogues

The two films of the Decalogue series are both examples of Midrash. They are both a portrayal of the commandments given to Moses, by God in the Old Testament of the Bible. These films assist in understanding the Ten Commandments and how they apply to real-life situations. The first commandment was that there should be no other gods before the one, true God. In this film, it is exemplified through the father and son what putting other things before God can result in. The father was prioritizing the computer and technology in general and was paying less and less attention to his son and his relationship with God was essentially non-existent. As the short film progressed, the boy began asking his aunt questions about religion and spirituality, to which she explained the family's history. It was also seen that the father had lost his faith over time. Towards the end of the film, the father was entangled in his work and missed the multiple signals given throughout the day that his boy had fallen through the ice while skating and died. He had relied so heavily on the truth of his technology and was not willing to believe that the computer had given him false results. The moral of this film in regards to the Ten Commandments was that when people get trapped in the business of life, it is easy to forget the importance of having a relationship with God and putting him first. This is not to say that if God is ignored, terrible things will happen. However, this story is a good portrayal of the importance of putting God and others ahead of our own selfish glory. The second film was a Midrash of the fifth commandment, "Thou shall not commit murder." The story portrays a young boy who kills a series of innocent people. Although both films are very difficult to watch, they bring to life the reality of the Ten Commandments and the weight of their meaning. They are not something to be taken lightly. Often times, people believe that the laws of the Old Testament are not applicable to modern life because the sacrifice of Jesus changed everything. However, of nothing else, the Ten Commandment are good moral guidelines to follow. I personally believe they are more important and significant than that. The Decalogue films, although dark, provide a great portrayal of the meaning of the Ten Commandments and their applicability to present-day.

Jeanette In Class Assignment #1: Decalogues

            The first time I was exposed to the idea of midrash was as a sixteen year old reading a book called “The Organic God” by Margaret Feinberg. She, a Protestant Christian, discussed her Jewish heritage and claimed the practice of midrash to be one of the most precious things that she retained from that tradition after she converted. She describes it as a practice that “challenges us to explore that which we do not know in order to better understand the One we want to know”. Feinberg additionally references Judith Kunst who, in her book “The Burning Word”, explains midrash as a view of the “Bible as a one-sided conversation, started by God, containing an implicit invitation, even command, to keep the conversation—argument, story, poem—going”.

            I think, first of all, that the medium of film works as midrash because it enables us to distance ourselves in order to reflect on its content. Film can be viewed and reviewed to clarify points of confusion, and when discussing the events of a film there are no excuses for misremembering what was done or said and how—you just rewind the tape. This is relevant to a discussion of God and morality because God is frequently portrayed as some sort of observer who understands everything, and there is some sort of comfort that we humans take in the fact that we are not observers and so we cannot understand everything. So we can say insulting things to the suffering like “it’s all part of His plan” or “the Lord works in mysterious ways”...implying that the suffering would all be justified if we could only see everything. On a related note, if the film cycle works to contextualize the commandments in an individual’s life, it is in its linking of the characters by their apartment complex more than it is in their individual narratives. It is possible to imagine that their actions as a microcosmic community somehow “fill in” the things that I, as a viewer, cannot understand after viewing the components separately.

            Film, as a medium, gives us the sense that we can see it all. Film makes us, in some strange sense, God-like. So when we’re forced to watch a film where it seems as though God is behaving badly, when watching something that makes us feel powerless, we are forced to question how, when we have all of the information, we still can’t understand the “why” of tragedy. When a father performs a calculation using his God-given intellect, then tests the ice himself anyway...when he uses everything at his disposal to make sure his child is safe, and his son drowns anyway...what more was the father supposed to do? Is there a limit to how much we should exercise our intellectual capabilities? Is God somehow threatened by our understanding? No, and we think that in part because we as viewers were not threatened by his attempts to understand his universe. And if we weren’t threatened, how can God be?

            The visuals of the film were powerful, but two stood out to me in particular, both in the first Decalogue. The first was the image of the homeless man sitting by the fire, in particular when his scene was juxtaposed between the scene of the son talking about God’s existence with his aunt and his playing the chess game alongside his father. This visual was striking as a commentary on the isolation felt by the father and son as they tried to make sense of the universe—the use of reason is frequently described as “cold” because it is implied that using it to determine action will yield only one acceptable course, and that course might be painful. The homeless man is trying to escape the cold by use of fire, warms but it unpredictable...unreasonable. This visual is used to emphasize the boy’s openness to the suprarational—first in his conversation with his aunt, then in his stepping outside of a closed system of logic (the chess game) and focusing on the unpredictable in the situation (the other player’s psyche).

           

            The second visual that really hit me was the spilling of the father’s ink as he worked. I think that served to materialize an idea that the worlds of reason and the inexplicable are inseperable, and that the distinction might be false. He was using ink to create ordered thoughts, to rationalize existence somehow, and then the same ink that could be used to order covered itself and created chaos. The commandments are given to us as a supposed means of love, but we try to understand them better by hypothesizing situations in which they seem to go against God, to work against Love. Is this really disrespectful, is it really creating an idol to try and understand? What more can we do, really?

Luke Taylor- Decalogue (Blog Assignment #1)

Luke Taylor

The first Decalogue film we watched clearly represents the second commandment that states, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Mariela Pelaia states in her article  About Judaism that there is a type of midrash known as Aggada (story). I would like to focus specifically on Aggada and explain the parallel to the film and its accordance to that of the golden calf story in Exodus. The gist of the story of the golden calf is that Moses’ people (the Israelites) turn their back on God and while Moses is on the mountain getting commandments from God, they worship a golden calf as their own god. Moses then comes back to the people as God is furious with them and wants to end the human race and start over.  However, Moses begs God to show mercy. In the film we see a similar concept. The father also worships a false idol, which is his computer. It is clear that the computer is his God because he constantly puts time into it, keeps it to himself in a selfish manner, and constantly puts its importance above everything else in his life. This false idol blinds him from truth in his life and his sole focus on it causes him to continuously miss the bigger picture. There is a distinct visual moment in the film where the father is playing in a chess match with his son against the reigning champion. The pure innocence of his son gives the son a unique wisdom that is unattainable for his father. The son tells his father to simplify the game with a ‘faithful’ move and he can win. The point he makes goes far beyond any chess match and speaks volumes of truth that the father cannot yet see; he sees it only as a winning tip for a chess match. Stanley Kubrick states that “by making their (their being the directors) points through the dramatic action of the story they gain the added power of allowing the audience to discover what is really going on rather than being told” which is exactly what happens after that scene. Instead of the film directly telling us, we as the audience are able to realize that the father is given this rare opportunity to see the truth yet it slips through his fingertips.  The realization I made is that it is this moment that transitions to the start of some sort of downfall. This relates to the golden calf story of the Israelites because they had Moses who shared truth with them right to their face but still chose to disobey God, which led to their downfall and punishment.  One can interpret the downfall to be inevitable because of the sad concept of worshipping false idols. The sense of meaning is greatly increased and the significance of that meaning is honoring the right God and not being fooled into the temptations of false idols. This emphasis on meaning is so great it has been integrated into the viewer’s lifestyle and mindset after watching the film. The director makes this meaning truly felt by the emotional appeal the viewer gains for the son. By making the son the one that is “sacrificed” for the father’s wrong doings of worshipping a false god, there is a lot more significance in the meaning because it tugs on the heartstrings of the viewers.

http://judaism.about.com/od/glossary/g/midrash.htm

I want to hear your thoughts on the son’s role in this film, what do you think it was? Also, the son is the one that died yet he was so innocent, do you see any parallel to the son dying to Jesus dying? The son did die and then the Father decided to possibly take God more serious, think about it.

Tyler Duvall

Misrash in the Decalogue

Purpose:

                Midrash is a method of revealing deeper meanings and even possibly hidden interpretations of scripture. For the purpose of exposing midrash in the collection of films known as the Decalogue, I will largely appeal to midrash aggada which is a form of biblically based ethical scenarios presented in story form.

Visual Medium as Midrash:

                Film, like many other mediums of expression, allows viewers to enter into an alternate reality where emotions expressed by the actors become tangible as if the audience were the ones experiencing the drama. Visual film in many ways is comparable to midrash because of the ethical situations often presented. Regardless if the intent of the director was to communicate biblical situations there are always biblical themes that can be derived from the film which allows for the existence of midrash aggada.  

                In reference to Decalogue 1, the film presented images of a man by the fire numerous times with little expression aside from a few tears in a particular scene. I was initially confused about his significance as he never spoke or interacted with any character apart from making eye contact with the protagonist. Upon closer examination I realized that this unknown character by the fire could represent God (God is also seen as the voice through the computer).

                Decalogue 1 is a parallel to the first commandment which states that man “…shall have no other gods before me [God]” (Exodus 20:3). The consequence of a lifestyle apart from serving God surely leads to death and a life of emptiness. This theme radiates throughout the film as the protagonist’s son is taken from him by death.

                Additionally, the parallel between the commandment, “you shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13), and the Decalogue 5 manifests in the ethical issues of justified vs. unjustified murder. I noticed that through images of suffering and death that ALL murder is wrong. Murder perpetuates murder and the theme of perpetuation radiates throughout this film. Using midrash to interpret the 5th commandment, I believe God knew the importance of life and that murder would not end with one life but would continue justifying an unjustified action.

Symbols:

                The most profound visual that I encountered in the films occurred in Decalogue 1. The protagonist taught a class discussing the reality of how translating phrases may not always carry their original weight into the other language. This concept was visually displayed when a phrase appeared in English on the computer that previously only displayed the polish language. The phrase that appeared was “I am ready” which is seen as a statement from God by the protagonist. The reason why this scene struck me so deeply is that English was not the protagonist’s native language and this symbolizes the possibility that he did not fully understand the weight of God’s statement. I relate to this in many ways as I have also received directives from God yet not know the significance of the word.  

                Through personal experiences, the film used a relay of feeling to ultimately deliver meaning that personally fit my worldview. In fact by doing this, the film is actually able to relate to anyone viewing the work. This occurs because concepts such as love, pain, and death are universal and as a result the audience can pull information from feeling and receive an impartation of knowledge.

Bridge between Film and Eternity:

                While the film certainly can relay God’s command to the viewer, the film alone does not bridge the concept of eternity into a God focused reality. However, the significance of the film remains valid as the Decalogue does raise ethical questions which cause deeper exploration of life. While the film is not a bridge to the ultimate meaning of eternity, it is a large plank in the bridge.

Question for the Reader:

Can God be discovered through the Ten Commandments solely?

Is the God character a genuine reflection of God’s actual character?

What demeanor does the director seem to view the God’s commandments? (Loving vs. unloving)

What demeanor do you view God’s commandments?