In recent years, most of the film and television drama works adapted from religious texts have become synonymous with "stale" and "old-fashioned", after all, in the face of superhero blockbusters, this kind of theme is too "earthy".
But there is a drama that, in my opinion, is never outdated, and it is not too much to even regard it as the greatest masterpiece in the history of television dramas.
The Ten Commandments
"The Ten Commandments" is a psychological drama series written and directed by Polish film master Křzystowski Kijślowski in 1989, mentioning Kieslowski's name, "Blue, White and Red Trilogy", "Interviewee", "Two Flowers", "Killing Short Film", "Love Short Film", "Song of Opportunity"... They are all regarded as classics.
As a recognized film master in film history, Kieslowski's artistic life has two distinct stages - the most realistic documentary era and the psychological exploration period full of mysticism, and "The Ten Commandments" is Kieslowski's most representative work in the field of psychological drama.
The theme of the play is based on the Biblical Ten Commandments of Moses, but Kieslowski did not intend to make the film a Hollywood-style gospel film and television drama, he wanted to use the modern life of Poles as a material.
Therefore, it is not so much that Kieslowski is talking about religion, but that he is questioning religion and exploring ethics with the help of religious themes.
Today, I will give you a good look at Amway's "Ten Commandments".
One
The Ten Commandments, namely, Reverence for God, Death and Life, Lies, Non-Love, Curse of heart, Beast, Seizure of Kinship, Burden, Evil Desire, and Harmony.
Although the Ten Commandments are based on and contain the Ten Commandments of Moses, Kieslowski did not intend to use the TV series to promote a particular religious precept, but instead threw all the precepts in the Ten Commandments of Moses into a pot and used different events and different character relationships to test whether these precepts were true.
To put it bluntly, the Ten Commandments place the psychological aspects of modern people in the first place, while the Christian Ten Commandments of Moses have become the object of questioning.
Like what
The first episode of the series tells the story of a "lost son", the reason why the little boy died unexpectedly, because the father used the computer to calculate the thickness of the ice surface is enough to bear the weight of the son, so the computer incarnated as the "back pot man".
This computer, which father and son regard as omniscient, is actually the embodiment of God.
Although most modern people no longer believe in the metaphysical God, they will always be trapped in the arms of the metaphysical God, so the director immediately questioned the views of "I am your God" and "you cannot believe in other gods" in the Ten Commandments of Moses.
If the death of a son is caused by a father's belief in a computer that offends God, does faith in God mean eternal life?
The real purpose of this kind of questioning is not to find a true God with boundless power, but to ponder a most modern question: Is it still useful for us to believe in God today?
Another example,
In the fifth episode, a young man is sentenced to death after killing people for no reason. The "thou shalt not kill" in the Ten Commandments of Moses is strongly questioned: if the murderer must be sentenced to death, then is the meaning of the law to exhort goodness or revenge?
The Ten Commandments put the name "the thickest haze hanging over modern society" on the head of the Bible, and it is worth watching and thinking about by every modern person.
After all, we can have no faith, but we have to face unavoidable ethical and moral propositions in real life, and what Kieslowski does is to find the answer to the puzzle in the dilemma.
Two
After watching two or three episodes, the audience will notice a strange young man who actually appeared by the lake and stared into the distance just after the first episode.
And in the second episode, he appears in the old doctor's laboratory, silent, as if no one notices him.
The young man later appeared in every episode, except for episodes seven and ten. Many critics call him an "angel," while others see him as the embodiment of the director himself.
The angel played by Artur Bachis doesn't have to do anything, just quietly watches each character. He witnesses the joy of love in episode six and suicide in episode nine.
He doesn't appear for no reason, and whenever a character needs to make a key decision or is faced with a special situation, it's his time to appear, waiting for the angel to appear is like watching an Easter egg while watching a Marvel movie.
However, unlike the Easter egg that is most often used as a gimmick, every appearance of the angel has a function, such as in order to persuade the male protagonist not to kill, he appears on the screen with his head shaking.
Three
In addition to the hidden angels, the protagonist of a single episode of the show will also appear as a passerby in another episode; or the story of one episode becomes a news event discussed in another episode.
Kieslowski arranged this not only to make the TV series "worthy of its name", not just a simple series of fragmentary stories, but more importantly, he wanted all the characters to live in the same building, forming a network of relationships that are inseparable, and also a microscopic corner of contemporary Polish society, perhaps we can also call it the "Kieslowski Universe".
For example, when the father of the first episode appeared in the third episode, he walked out of the apartment building to meet the male protagonist of the third episode, not only took a look, but also peeked into the harmonious family of the "new male protagonist" through his perspective.
This is actually an interesting juxtaposition contrast, the father in the first episode lost his son and loneliness, while the male protagonist in the third episode was reunited with the family.
A similar situation occurs in episode VIII, where the events discussed by the students are actually the story of the second episode, where Kieslowski cleverly engages in episode-to-episode intertextuality, using the moral dilemmas of one episode to discuss the moral issues of another.
Therefore, in the process of watching "The Ten Commandments", although we can rarely see the overall sense of being connected by fixed characters, because of the more advanced techniques such as perspective cutting, topic introduction, etc., this seemingly scattered series has a more natural vein.
Four
If the intertextuality between characters or stories is still at the technical level, then the theme shared by all ten episodes is the deeper beaded thread.
In the first episode, the father believed in the computer and caused his son to die;
In the second episode, the wife conceives someone else's child when her husband is critically ill, resulting in the husband's death and death directly related to the life and death of the child;
In the fourth episode, the daughter has a crush on her father, and the words in the suicide note of the biological mother will determine whether she confesses to her father...
This is "The Ten Commandments", a TV series that does not make people feel comfortable with every story, and even if the tenth episode unexpectedly turns into comedy, it also exposes the characters to difficult moral dilemmas.
As Kieslowski himself said, although people in reality will not necessarily encounter all the difficulties in the play, we will always be free from one or two of these contradictions, and even these one or two will make us anxious.
Five
When Kieslowski and screenwriter Piersevitz were writing the script for The Ten Commandments, they didn't really intend to shoot it themselves, and he wanted to invite ten young directors to shoot an episode each of them to form a different style.
However, when the script was completed, Kieslowski regretted it and decided to shoot it himself. There is no doubt that it was fortunate that he made such a "selfish" decision that year.
But even though he directed it himself, he found different cinematographers for the ten episodes, only two of which came from the same pair. This also leads to a very big difference in the image style and narrative strategy of the entire TV series.
For example, the fifth episode uses a lot of filters, and the photography style is harsh and hard;
The shot in the sixth episode is rather subdued, with slow and elegant camera movements.
Therefore, although watching the same series of the same director, each episode has its own style and temperament, and this different image texture under the same theme can only be so willfully controlled by Kieslowski as a master.
Six
Just as Bergman never hesitated to elaborate descriptions of marriage and family, And Fassbinder obsessively delved into the intergenerational relationship between mother and child, Kieslowski was always interested in ethical relations in the family.
But Kieshi is rather pessimistic about the most intimate ethical relationship in the world.
In the Ten Commandments, the whole building is haunted by lies, and all the people struggle to get out of the cage of falsehood. However, as if it were a curse, they needed this false skin bag more to maintain a life that was unbearable but could not be abandoned.
In the second episode, the wife cheats and has a child, but the husband is already critically ill at this time, and the laws of society tell her that if the husband is alive, the child will have to be killed, but the doctor lied to her so that the child could be saved.
The same lie also appears in the third episode, where the male protagonist lies to his family to find a car in order to help his ex-girlfriend find her husband;
In the fourth episode, in order to continue to maintain an ambiguous relationship with her father, the daughter burns her mother's suicide note, hoping to use silent lies to build an unrequited love.
The Ten Commandments reshuffle falsehood and truth, allowing family members who should be honest with each other to appear as false faces.
In episode 9, lies nearly destroy a family. Due to sexual impotence, the husband allows the wife to "move freely" outside, but the wife insists on fidelity. But the truth of the matter is that the husband found out that his wife was secretly peeping, until he was discovered by his wife, and the two were relatively speechless. While sincere emotions tie each other together, the false physical relationship tests the loyalty of both husband and wife.
This is the Kieslowskiian family dilemma, the more intimate the relationship, the more intolerant the existence of pure honesty, it requires hypocrisy as a lubricant, so that people can act in a relatively free false space, while absolute honesty is reduced to a blank cheque that can only be signed and cannot be cashed.
Kieslowski once talked about thinking about "honesty" and "falsehood" in an interview, arguing that "honesty" itself is an extremely complex combination, but on the way to this combination, many people have no way out.
This is the Ten Commandments, which never have faith in honesty, even in the "family."
In my opinion, The Ten Commandments is Kieslowski's most serious and profound work, and the audience, once in the play, will never doze off for nearly nine hours.
Although Kishi is a serious literary film director, many of his works are full of fun, which is especially evident in the Ten Commandments.
When you appreciate his humor, you will win a sense of satisfaction that goes far beyond watching a soap opera.