Decalogue, four

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Movie
German title Decalogue, four
Original title Decalogue, cztery
Country of production Poland
original language Polish
Publishing year 1990
length 55 minutes
Rod
Director Krzysztof Kieślowski
script Krzysztof Kieślowski,
Krzysztof Piesiewicz
production Ryszard Chutkowski
music Zbigniew Preisner
camera Krzysztof Pakulski
cut Ewa Smal
occupation
chronology

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Decalogue, Three

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Decalogue, Five

Dekalog, Vier is a Polish television film from 1990. As the fourth part of the Dekalog series by director Krzysztof Kieślowski , the film deals with the fourth commandment You should honor your father and mother .

content

The 20-year-old drama student Anka grows up with her father Michal. Her mother died shortly after she was born. When Michal goes on a trip, Anka finds a letter addressed to her, which she is only allowed to open after Michal's death. She begins to open the letter, but finds a second letter in the first one with her mother's handwriting. When she then looks at her mother's things in the basement, she finds an empty envelope and prepares an envelope that looks identical to the one inside the letter. When Michal returns from the trip, she confronts him with the fact that the inner letter says that he is not her birth father at all. As it turns out, Anka had known about the letter for five years and suspected the truth for a long time. Michal, for his part, had wanted to give her the letter since she was 10 years old, but initially couldn't ("... at 10 you were too small and at 15 too big ..."). For years he always took it with him when he was traveling, so that she wouldn't find it, but he suspected that she had known about the letter for a long time. And so this time he "accidentally" left it so that she can find it and read it. There are extremely open conversations between the two, in which both of them repeatedly change their roles from “father / daughter” to “man / woman”. It seems that the father / daughter relationship is over forever. Little by little, Anka and Michal make up again. The next morning Michal leaves the house and Anka runs after him shouting “Father, Father” and tells him that she has only forged the letter and shows him a letter from her mother that is still sealed. They burn the letter together. A small residue with the first sentences of the letter remains. It begins almost literally just like the letter that Anka Michal presented.

In this film Kieslowski opposes a taboo subject to the 4th commandment, namely the love between father and daughter. Freud's insights play just as important a role here as the realization that today's reality is much more complex than the authors of the commandments could imagine.

criticism

"The story has the traits of a classic one-act play, is played intensely, but strongly constructed."

- film service

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