I have seen _Dekalog_ several times (some episodes more than
others), but have never noticed the pairing between consecutive
installments. _1_ and _2_ have something to do with the threat
to a child (I have to rewatch them soon). _7_ and _8_ concern
the theft or removal of a child from his/her family.

_5_ and _6_ are the most visceral and disturbing, dealing as
they do with love and death. The motif of fluids (bodily or
otherwise) run through them -- tears, excrement (implied)
during the execution, excrement (metaphorical) in the coffee
and grind splashed on to a cafe window, tears, saliva, semen.
At least _6_ has its moments of purity and innocence (milk
delivery is a major plot point). Young Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko)
spies on the beautiful but jaded Magda (Grazyna Szapolowski)
with a telescope as she carries on affairs with multiple
partners. She finds out, humiliates him, and he slits his
wrist. When he recovers his idealism and exalted notions
above love are gone, but Magda is deeply touched and regains
some form of innocence. In keeping with the Christian themes
of the series, he has sacrificed his ideals to redeem hers.
The cinematography by Witold Adamek involves long lenses
peering through windows, and is a technical marvel and
paragon of clarity.

I vaguely remember that the long version of _6_ changes the
ending and the tone of the story somewhat, while the
extended print of _5_ (_A Short Film about Killing_) is
truly far superior because it dramatizes the way the murderer
Jacek (Miraslaw Baka) and his lawyer Piotr (Krzysztof Globisz)
in the fateful, aforementioned cafe where the former plans
his crime. The 1-hour version only alludes to this cut scene.
Kieslowski always emphasizes that things can happen due to
human's will, due to chance, or supernatural events ("God").
If _6_ is about the will of man and woman, _5_ stresses
happenstances. It is entirely due to chance that the
particular taxi driver is killed, for petty cash. Jacek
confesses to Piotr that he might have stayed on his farm
if his sister had not been run over by a truck driven by
his best friend after the two of them had a drinking binge.
This is the sensitive Piotr's first case (a plot point
repeated in _Red_); he does his best to appeal to the
judge's conscience (shades of _No End_) but Jacek is
condemned to hanging, just as he has murdered the taxi
driver with a rope. The correction facility officers carry
out his sentence with a similar brutality too, if with
a great deal more efficiency. Unlike in _6_, there is
no innocence redeemed; Piotr is devastated in the end.
Would he become as callous and hardened as the older judges?

The great Slawomir Idziak shoots the film as if it were
Hieronymus Bosch's "Hell" paintings in motion -- brown,
faded round the rims, visionary. There is even a touch
of the greenish hue, as if to suggest some otherworldly
last judgement, found in _Double Life of Veronique_,
which causes so much controversy (more on in another
post).

---------------------------------------------------------

I went to _Nocturnal Animals_ expecting another _Single Man_,
director Tom Ford's cool and stylish first film. Instead
it is almost as visceral as _A Short Film about Killing_.
This being an American film, the sentence is carried out
by vigilante shooting rather than relinquished to the
state, but it certainly has more than its share of bodily
fluids.

_Nocturnal Animals_ could be called _A Long Film about
Hatred_. Amy Adams' Susan hates her aristocratic, Christian,
conservative family. She especially hates her mother for
foretelling the failure of her marriage because the husband
is from a different class. Jake Gyllenhaal's Tom, her
plebian novelist ex-husband, hates her family too,
but also blames her for aborting their child. In his new
novel, he turns in an amazing feat of hatred-by-association,
swapping one Republican architype for another, and makes
the villains three redneck misogynist thugs who terrorize,
rape, and kill his wife and daughter while he helplessly
look on. If it's any consolation, he hates himself for
his weakness most of all, and Adams isn't far behind in
that department. I suppose the molass of liberal guilt
is supposed to absolve them?

The film purposely makes the audience uncomfortable, not
only in the scenes about attack on the women but also during
the extended opening credits. It goes out of its way to
put into question the value of Art as provocation. In
that department at least it is a far better film than
Michael Hanake's misanthropic tales like the home-invasion
extravaganza _Funny Games_ which deliberately denies
catharsis. _Nocturnal Animals_, based on a novel, is really
quite a sophisticated, thoughtful film. But it is also twice
as long as _Dekalog 5_ and not half as immaculately written
or intellectually engaging.

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