Mahabharata: Myth or much more

"Making sense of Mahabharata", an article by Balpreet Kaur was recently an article in a newspaper about my lecture-cum-workshop in Chitkara School of Mass Communication, Sector 25, Chandigarh. The literary beauty of the piece was itself an astonishment for me. I could rarely believe myself that it was worth such an appreciation. To put matters across clearly, this was my first public performance (a philosophy workshop on Mahabharata) in the last decade of my journey with and into the Mahabharata. After finishing my research project on "Decalogue and Mahabharata", I was finding new reasons to start afresh in this domain and it happened when the Dean (Academics) at Chitkara School of Mass Communication, Chandigarah, Ms. Suparna Saraswati invited me for a bit difficult exercise with the students. It was difficult in the sense of difficulty of communication because Mahabharata has never been merely a text for me rather it has grown into me or I have got assimilated/entangled into it the way a jungle grows into you or you grow in a jungle. Communication is generally a linear process; so, it was quite difficult to communicate the message of jungle to an urban intellect. It can be quite comparable to talk about life in a rainforest before an audience which is used to monocrop of mechanical farming or controlled/manicured natural surroundings. To understand the true meaning of biological diversity is very tedious task for a mind conditioned with concrete structures of urban life. With this kind of an impossible target, I entered the Seminar Hall with a serious doubt over my own capability. The time started, went through and through and finally I realized that two hours had passed and the audience was still perched on their seats asking questions after questions. Some excerpts of that workshop are available below in form of three PODCASTS.

1. Mahabharata: Myth or much more, Part One

2. Mahabharata: Myth or much more, Part Two

3. Mahabharata: Myth or much moe, Part Three

Once it was over, I could feel a sense of satisfaction inside but I needed an 'other' to apprise me of what I had done. Balpreet and students did that to certain extent. Today, I feel that this was an ecologue of my work done in the last ten years. I wish to retell the stories of Mahabharata again with some new device, some new audience and some new catalyst. The jungle of Mahabharata is calling again.

Decalogue and Mahabharata-14

"None of these films is a simple demonstration of black and white moral issues....These are not characters involved in the simpleminded struggles of Hollywood plots. They are adults, for the most part outside organized religion, faced with situations in their own lives that require them to make moral choices. You shouldn't watch the films all at once, but one at a time. Then if you are lucky and have someone to talk with, you discuss them, and learn about yourself. Or, if you are alone, you discuss them with yourself, as so many of Kieslowski's characters do."

-RogerEbert,Chicago Sun-Times

This is the last film in Decalogue series. It is the only comic film of the entire series. Watching it is undergoing an experience of relief and faith in life. When this film ends, it ends with two brothers laughing over their own foolish misunderstandings about each other. They realise the fallibility of human thinking and a decision based upon it. It made me think immediately that it was a sheer chance for them to discover the real truth otherwise they would have stayed on a course of mutual rivalry throughout their lives, a course which is a course of destruction in entire Mahabharata. Had Dhritrashtra not been blind or his younger brother, Pandu not have died, the things would have been very different. There's no point in questioning why the story happened the way it is now rather what needs to be understood is that they are built upon a series of fallible reactions before certain situations of life. In Decalogue Ten, the mutual laughing of brothers is creating a non-possibility of a story of animosity like that of Mahabharata. The bitter seeds of mistrust which they had created just some moments back were eliminated through the confession and mutual sharing.

Kieslowski wanted to communicate that human actions shall always be limited in their response but it depends upon the human beings themselves to transform that thing into a virtue or vice. In this film, the centre of dispute was the property (in the form of expensive and real stamps) not unlike Mahabharata where property (the kingdom of Hastinapur) is also the centre of dispute. The misunderstanding between the brothers in the film remained for a short period but the misunderstanding between the brothers in Mahabharata remained for a long period. All human crises emerge from a lack of mutual trust. The site of the origin of a problem is always very minute; the magnitude of crisis is only a projection of the existence of crisis. That's why Kieslowski is not interested always in the size of the crisis rather he is focused upon the origin of the crisis. When we explore the origin, we explore the human fallibility. We may not control it, but we can definitely resolve it if we are able to understand the integrated nature of spaces, both human as well as nonhuman. When Theophanes enters a story, he is actually the symbol of nonhuman entry. When a computer starts blinking, a glove box suddenly opens or phone bell rings, it is again the symbol of nonhuman presence. When one character of a story surfaces in the other story, it is again the symbol of mutually inclusive spaces. The point of focus is that humanity is embedded in an ecosystem occupied by something more than the human determinism. Man is not a control machine and he cannot be; if it tries to do that, it will only destroy the balance of ecosystem. Kieslowski is not interested in configuring that ecosystem because he wants to keep it in the realm of invisible knowledge which he calls “not knowing”.

This film is built around the two sons of the stamp collector shown in Decalogue Eight. Both of them have come together after a very long time on the funeral of their own father. Their elder son is Jerzy who works in an office and the younger son is Artur, a rock singer in a band called ‘The City Death’. Both of them have been away from their father too. Their father was a lonely person who had only one passion of stamp collection. In the philately community, he was called the “root”. He had won a lot of prizes in international competitions and had earned a lot of professional reputation in philately circles. But he was a poor father and a poor husband who could not find enough time and resources for his family. His death has left the question of his property or his heritage an open question. Both the sons are trying to solve this question out of different needs. During the entire film, we almost fail to understand whether they are selfish and want to make a fortune out of selling stamps of their father's collection or they're trying to connect at an emotional level with their father by developing an interest in what he has left. Kieslowski, as usual, does not portray his characters in black and white. Many a time, it seems that they have nothing to do with stamps or their father but there is something compelling which keeps them attached to stamps. Jerzy’s son happens to lose the Zeppelin series but to recover that, Jerzy takes all risk and finally traces the person who has them. But, he's a really talented gangster and he dodges Jerzy but Artur is a smart person; he plays a trick, blackmails him and finally recovers the Zeppelin series. Had it been only the motive of money, things would never have gone to such dramatic levels for them?

The film is clearer in the terms of atmosphere. This is an atmosphere of fraternal relationships. It is mixed with both the questions of family property and family identity. When the film begins, Artur is singing on the stage a song full of hedonistic impulses. The power of song is the power of the culture of materialism built around us. It's a culture that moves the people towards alienation in the name of identification. It's a culture where the fundamental institutions of the society start losing their value and relevance. Both the brothers have struggled through this atmosphere. They don't seem to be much uncomfortable with that but the death of their father awakens in them the need to connect with something and somebody. Though the initial motivation is greed but as the film proceeds, they happen to find other meanings too and the most important is the value of brotherly trust and the institution of family. Artur is a better gifted in terms of sixth sense than his brother. When Jerzy tells him about his father's collection, he says in wonder, “Where does it come from? The urge to have something”. He is also a good initiator in terms of taking decisions. When they are short of money, they think of selling the stamps but Artur expresses that ““I don’t know why but for the moment, I don’t want to touch them.”

Gradually, out of a mixed desire to save the stamps from getting stolen, they start becoming protective of them. In the process, they discover the joy of stamp collection and also the depth of effort which their father must have put in creating such a vast treasure of knowledge. During that, they find a very rare and expensive stamp of Austrian Mercury series missing. Their father had tried to fill that gap for long but he could not. The gangster from whom Artur had procured Zeppelin series, offers them the missing link, the Austrian Rose Mercury. Both of them feel an urgent need to fill that gap but he has a condition. He needs something expensive in return. For him, it's not a question of money rather he wants a kidney for his 16-year old girl. After a lot of agitation, Jerzy agrees to donate one of his because only he has the matching blood group. During the operation, Artur waits outside and flirts with a nurse but this is a moment of serious loss. While they are in the hospital, somebody breaks into their house and steals the entire collection. They do acquire the Austrian Rose Mercury but they have lost the entire series.

The police is informed but nobody is caught. Both the brothers get doubtful of each other and separately inform the police about the possible complicity of the other. But, very soon, they discover that the robbery was done by a group of people who knew about the collection and the fact of their absence from the home. The film ends with a laughing scene both the brothers find themselves having purchased the same series of stamps. It shows that they have discovered their father a bit within themselves. They might have lost the property of their father but they have saved the heritage of their father. The property was a collection of stamps but the heritage is the spirit of kinship and the urge to have something.

Decalogue and Mahabharata-13

"While Kieslowski often delved into the discouraging sides of human nature, he was not out to judge his characters. He may have been inspired by the Ten Commandments to create The Decalogue, but his journeys into the basic paradoxes of religious faith vs. science, love vs. lust, life vs. death are not bound by the dictates. Each of the stories is numbered without any direct reference to a commandment. Any clearly defined ethical or moral edicts are up to the beholder."

-Nancy Kapitanoff, Pulse!  

When I was watching the ninth part of Decalogue series, there evoked so many references spread around in his later works and other film classics that I could fathom a bit, the depth of the Kieslowski's philosophy. One can see the seeds of his future films, a recurrence of his earlier films and a deeper capacity to relate to his fellow filmmakers who discovered his themes through their own films. Watching the ninth part was an experience that one can equate with the last portion of Stanley Kubrick's ‘Eyes Wide Shut’. The trauma faced by the couple after their failed sexual ventures is quite similar to the same pain faced by the couple in this part nine. Kubrick always regarded Decalogue as the “masterpiece of film history”. His films getting influenced with Decalogue is not a secret but this symbolises the absolute philosophical reach Kieslowski commanded among his fellow filmmakers. There is a young woman patient in this film. She is a gifted singer but she has a rare heart condition. Her medical problem doesn't allow her to sing but she wants to only sing. She wants a small bit of fulfilled life rather than a whole of unfulfilled life. She is a precursor to Veronica of Kieslowski's later film ‘The Double Life of Veronique’. We also come across the beginning of one more important film, ‘Three colours: the White’ through the character of Roman in this film who has the same problem as Karol has in ‘The White’. We also come across playing and singing Ania, a young girl from Decalogue seven. She is reminiscent of the importance of family, children and love in one's life. We also come across the similar themes of covetousness and promiscuity as we did in Decalogue six and seven. Watching Kieslowski is like missing him at every next step. This film is remarkable from this perspective.

This film is situated around a couple, Roman and Hanka. Roman is a successful surgeon and Hanka works in an airline's office. They have not chosen to have kids in the last ten years of their marriage. At a superficial level, they are a hot couple but at a deeper level, they are living under the curse of selfishness imposed upon them by the modern civilisation which looks upon human beings like atomised individuals. They are here in this world to eat, to work, to consume and to maintain the routine of the same. Their sense of enjoyment is confined to the pleasures of senses. There don't seem to design a future; they only seem to conform; they don't seem to transcend the routine; they only happen to live like what Herbert Marcuse would call the life of one-dimensional man. This curse of modern civilisation generates an acutely painful realisation of ‘something missing’. This film begins with exactly that. Hanka suddenly wakes from her sleep as if he has gone through a nightmare. The camera watches her in the mirror which shows her along with emptiness by her side. This is a space expected to be filled up with her husband but he seems to be nowhere. Is he nowhere in the room or inside Hanka? Kieslowski is exploring that.

Exactly on the parallel side, her husband Roman is being shown being investigated by a doctor friend. It comes out that he has become sexually impotent. There is no hope or any chance of recovery. There is no direct and immediate reason mentioned by the doctor but it seems that this has something to do with Roman’s philandering past when he had relationships with number of women. He has a history of being unfaithful with his wife. Now, something that enabled him to be unfaithful has become incapacitated. The sudden loss of masculinity creates a kind of hollowness in his life. His wife is also suffering from hollowness possibly through the absence of a child in her womb or the absence of a loving and faithful husband in her life. Kieslowski is seriously avoiding any kind of direct treatment of their personalities. He leaves so many areas for open interpretation that his characters become vague but attractive. When Roman is coming back from the doctor, he is both angry and frustrated resulting in a near accident. Immediately after that, he is intercepted by Theophanes on a bicycle as if he's checking whether he's safe or not. This is something he is going to do again in the end. Roman knows that he has lost his potency but he still wants to live life. The problem is that he has not developed a strong base of love with her wife. He's not sure of what is in store for him particularly from his wife. He comes back to his home but doesn't come out of car because of this lack of surety. He is standing in the rain getting drenched but is unable to decide the course of next action. The rain is a powerful symbol of both purity and virility but despite its abundance, he's feeling empty inside. At last, his wife Hanka comes down and takes him along. He discloses what the doctor has told him. He says to her wife, “You will have to start seeing somebody if you haven’t already” but she answers, “I haven’t”. Both of them need each other but they have never bothered to develop the element of trust and faith between them. Hanka tries to assure him of her faithfulness. She proclaims that love is more than sex, more than biology. It seems true yet it doesn't. Both of them are trying to find an anchor of hope in an element which they never cared for. Now, it's this test which they need to clear despite all possible failures.

The rest of film is a sad narrative of their continuous failings and continuous attempts to resurrect the hope. Kieslowski comes with a set of sustained abstractions around their efforts. The shifting pattern of light and darkness with the spots of light illuminating both, one after the other, tries to capture the mood and mind of the characters. The continuous pan of camera through a glass jar is also indicative of their struggle with transparency of relationship. The irony of whole situation is that Hanka is still sexually involved with a young student, Mariusz who keeps coming to her house. Roman becomes aware of their relationship and gets jealous about that. He starts pursuing their relationship through all possible modes. He transplants an alternative device to hear over the telephonic dialogue. He gets duplicate keys of their house. He steals his wife's letters. He is sinking into an abyss of despair but there is an element of grace in his life. There is a young woman patient, Ola in his hospital. She is a gifted singer and an extremely beautiful person. Had Roman been in his sexual prime, he would never have lost the opportunity but here, she is a perfect case for hope at least for him. She wants to sing and wants to die singing. She doesn't want to live a long life without music in that. But her heart is weak for her singing talent. She is at such a situation in medical terms that her heart needs to be saved at all costs. Through small moments of the beauty of music, she reinterprets the notion of purpose of life. She is like a teacher to him. Kieslowski is a director who never misses the possibility of hope within the interstices of disappointment. Ola and Roman share a totally nonsexual realm of beauty. She can sing a variety of musicians but her favourite is Van Budenmayer, Zbigniew Preisner’s fictional name. Roman is swayed by her extremely talented and beautiful voice. He finds his own interpretation of life and pleasure too small for her but the realisation is not as direct and immediate as it should be. Exactly on the parallel side, he is pursuing Hanka and her lover. While he is doing that, he is continuously being intercepted by the glove box of his car. It is exactly like the crooked picture of Decalogue part eight or like the computer of Decalogue part one. These are the instruments that seem to acquire a trans-mechanical existence and start defying what human beings expect of them. He tries to close the glove box but it doesn't get closed and keeps opening repeatedly breaking his attention. This is a typical style of Kieslowski. In his films, the plot is not that much important rather the breaks inside the plot are more important. He is a master of abstraction but he's not like Bergman. He is exploring the material reality and finds a number of holes in it which may be the sites of transcendence.

During the course of pursuing, one day, both Hanka and Roman come face to face and the bitter truth gets exposed. The irony of the situation is that she had decided it to be the last meeting with her boyfriend but her chance of staying as a hidden but faithful wife could not be sustained. Both of them are unable to handle this face-off. They plan a short period of separation and also an adoption. Hanka goes for skiing at nearby hill station but to make matters worse, her boyfriend also comes to know of her plans and also reaches there. Roman happens to watch him leaving with skis and confirms about his plans from his mother through a phone call. The moment he comes to know of the reality, he loses trust in Hanka but he has overreacted to the situation. Hanka is not even aware of her boyfriend's plan. The moment he lands before her, she runs back to public phone, informs at his hospital about her immediate return, boards a bus and prays that everything is okay. Here, Roman has decided to end his life. He writes a suicide note for her, takes his bicycle and jumps down from an incomplete road. He is again intercepted by Theophanes and perhaps, saved by him. In the final scene, he is in a hospital lying on a bed. Hanka after returning to home, has read the note and is deeply disappointed but a phone call from Roman reinserts hope in her. She says, “God, you’re there,” and “I am”, he replies. At last, they have survived all accidents, private and public, to find a common anchor in love.

Decalogue and Mahabharata-12

This film is a commentary on the unforeseen links between the intellectual positions and real life stances. It is generally believed that both amount to the same. In some cases, intellectual position seems to guide the action but the situation is not entirely like that. Kieslowski used to say that ‘Knowing’ is not his business rather ‘not knowing’ is. He seems to convey in this film that what an intellectual position posits may not be the totality of what the mind thinks. The relationship between a principle and the life-world of a mind is a very complex one. Rather, taking a principle is a liminal stance and living a principle is an organic stance. Zofia and Elzbieta, the two main characters of the eighth part of Decalogue series, are trapped in between the two. Zofia teaches ethics at a Polish university while Elzbieta is a scholar from New York who has translated Zofia’s works into English. She is on a sojourn back to Poland after forty years. The exact motive is not very clear though it keeps coming out slowly and slowly during the course of the film. She takes permission to attend Zofia’s classes for a better understanding of her works.

            There is an interesting thing about this film. Its plot is divided into two parts; the first one is quite like a part of textual narrative and the second one is quite dramatic and filmic in nature. The first part is full of many elaborations built around philosophical and ethical issues. Since it is the eighth film in the series of ten, Kieslowski is consciously taking some liberties to familiarize the audience about the broad plan of his project. The story of Decalogue Two i.e. Dorota, her child, her dying husband and her lover, all come together in an ethical puzzle presented by one of the students of Zofia. He is deliberately taking the spectator into a past which may be a chronologically prior event but he is trying to hint that the films don’t belong to a chronological scheme rather they can be seen like a simultaneously occurring events. The origin of ethical problems can be always in the immediate environment around us. We are in a world criss-crossing simultaneously too many zones of time and space. Kieslowski is quite close to Saussure in his basic assumptions that life and language are a result of synchronic and not a diachronic phenomenon. On similar lines, he is introducing an old man, a stamp collector, who is building the context of the Decalogue Ten. Before the tenth part starts, he has already died after collecting rare stamps like that of Zeppelin Series in his repertoire. In the tenth part, he is only a memory though he is alive and a participating actor in the eighth one. He is Zofia’s friend. When Elzbieta asks Zofia about him, “Is he a stamp collector?” she answers back, “Yes, but much more than that.” We don’t know the details but it seems obvious that both of them share their loneliness because of a compelled life unattended and unappreciated by their children.

            The first part of the plot depends a lot on the long dialogues rather case studies of ethical issues. While trying to explain the ethical problem posed by her student, she upholds the centrality of saving a child’s life as the most fundamental ethical issue. Theophanes is there sitting in the form of the student. He is silently vouching for the sanctity of statements in that seminar hall. Elzbieta is perturbed over what Zofia says about the upholding the right of the child to be saved. She comes to the first desk, closer to Zofia and puts across another case study which “has one bad thing, it belongs to the past but it has one virtue that it is true.” The moment details of the case study start coming out, Zofia cannot remain unnerved because it is a story about her own past when she had herself denied the similar right to a six-year old Jewish girl in Warsaw during the Second World War in 1943. The story is that ‘the girl was in hiding from the Nazis but she was forced to move to another safe house, that of a Catholic family who agreed to shelter her if she is a Christian. The couple who is handling this transfer, suddenly, stop this transfer because they refuse to bear a false witness to God by wrongfully giving a Christian name to the girl. The child is driven out of their house when there is curfew time outside thus by meaning a near-sure death for her. The fact is that Elzbieta is that girl and one of the couple is Zofia herself. Her husband has died way back and now, she is the only to carry the curse of that unethical act of theirs. Once, the secret comes out, the plot resumes its dramatic quality. While Elzbeita is almost on the verge of ending her case story, she is accidentally stopped by the sudden entry of a drunkard student. It is quite reminiscent of the Decalogue Three of a similar character who symbolizes the spirit of the main character, Janusz. Zofia is the exact replica of the same character in this case. She is also shaken. She has come across the hole in the otherwise moral life of hers. She has not denied its existence but she has never been able to solve that too. Elzbieta is quite courageous on that front and through her; Zofia also tries to come to terms with that crisis.

            Joseph Kickasola calls this film “the most philosophically direct of the ten films and among the greatest”. I think that he is like any Western mind that is suffering from the guilt conscience of the Holocaust and a film on the same, and that too by somebody like Kieslowski, should be ranked among the greatest. But the moot point is not the greatness of the film rather its universality. In Mahabharata, when Bhishma was on the verge of Death and was lying on the bed of arrows, there happened an interesting thing. People after people came to pay him a final visit but after all were gone, there came in the near-darkness, Karna, to meet him. This was a very difficult meeting between the two. Once, when I asked the same question to Prof. Ramchandra Gandhi in his philosophy workshop, he came quite close to an accurate explanation of the same. He said that one hates the other precisely for the vice, which the one has not been able to manage oneself. Karna and Bhishma share a common trait that both have reduced them into stagnant characters; Bhishma by subjecting the power of his fertility permanently to the cause of his father’s love for a girl and as a result, developed a kind of sustained impotence. Karna is so obsessed with the question of identity that he reduces himself into a permanently trapped warrior fighting for the Kauravas. Both have done a similar unethical act; both have reduced the essential flow-like nature of theirs into a closed one. They have denied the descent of grace through the denial of flexibility. That is also the source of mutual hatred between the two. That is also the reason why Karna refuses to fight till Bhishma is alive and leading the army of the Kaurvas. But the certain death of the one removes the cause of this hatred and non-dialogue. Karna feels sorry for all the insulting things he had done to Bhishma and he answers back in equally poignant tone. They know that death is the only certainty now left in their lives; both of them are trying to cleanse their souls.

            On not a very dissimilar personal need, Zofia and Elzbieta are trying to solve their crisis. Elzbieta is trying to come out of the deep anguish with Zofia over her desertion while Zofia has been trying her all life to solve that crisis by teaching ethics through her lectures and books. Both the lives are like the crooked picture hanging in Zofia’s drawing room. Both of them take their turns at setting it right but the picture again bends. After the class ends, both of them meet in the corridor and Zofia confirms the veracity of the case study. Finally, the victim and the perpetrator of the crime, both are face to face. Zofia offers her a lift but she refuses as her hotel is just at the walking distance. Zofia tries again and invites her for an evening supper. This time she doesn't refuse and accompanies. Zofia, before taking her to apartment, stops the car at Noakowski Street just before the house where the tragic incident had happened. Zofia had left that place years back. It's a kind of face-off with their past. It's dark desolate building with a shrine, full of shattered homes and broken hopes. In a symbolic manner, it is a past that has lost its meaning; it is a past that is the best to be left as it is; it's a past worth forgetting. Elzbieta, during the visit to this house, plays trick upon Zofia. She wants to be looked for because she has always missed the deserving attention she needed. She wants to test Zofia’s sincerity. She hides in the darkness and Zofia thinks that she has lost her again. She goes to all corners of the house but cannot find her. She seems to miss the chance of redemption but when she comes back, she finds Elzbieta sitting in the car.

            At her apartment, both of them share the supper, their lives, their pains and a human bond. Zofia tells her why she had refused to bear the false witness. Actually, she was a member of the underground moment and the new family destined to be the girl’s protector, was a Gestapo collaborator. This threatened the entire command of underground moment which meant losing the bigger goal of freedom. Elzbieta is not so happy with the answer but understands the complexity of the situation. Zofia confesses before her that it was a decision which always haunted her because it was not a sign of goodness. She could do nothing after the incident. She could only locate the centrality of a child's right to be saved as the ultimate determinant of ethical life. But she could not do in real life; she tried to compensate it with in her intellectual life.

            After the supper, she requests her to stay. This request is a cry out of loneliness because the Zofia is living alone there for years. Her only son is living very far because he doesn't want to stay with her. Elzbieta realises that Zofia has already suffered for nearly an involuntary crime. She reconciles with her past and prays in Zofia's son’s room. In the morning, Zofia goes for her morning walk and comes across a contortionist who is practising his art in full public view. Zofia tries to imitate him but fails. In this comical intervention, the contortionist says that it's all a matter of practice and time before one can do it. In a way, it's an indication that contortions of human mind are a product of human beings too. They can correct them with the help of both time and effort. At home, Zofia and Elzbieta, both of them bring flowers for each other thus indicating the return of internal peace. Finally, Elzbieta expresses a desire to meet her would-be protector. Zofia takes her to that man who's a tailor. He has grown quite old and works in a very old shop too. Elzbieta introduces her and wants to discuss something about the war but he straightaway refuses to talk anything about the war and what happened after it. It’s a period of humiliation which he wants to forget permanently rather he wants to dress up her in new clothes. Again and again, he ignores her questions and shows her the possible designs of a new costume. Kieslowski seems to indicate that this is a time for the new dress up (internally) for Elzbieta. She returns redeemed.

            

Decalogue and Mahabharata-11

This is the film in which for the first time, we are not able to see Theophanes from very close quarters. (Though he appears, in the end, in the form of a crippled person  who disembarks from the train in distant background; he is so far that we even fail to recognise him.) In the last film, both Tomek and Magda were intercepted by a glance of Theophanes during the moments of transformation. For Tomek, his recognition as a lover was the moment and for Magda, it was a chance of self redemption. But, in this seventh part of Decalogue series, the metaphysical touch commonly found in all earlier films is missing. In that sense, it may be the weakest film in the entire project but we can understand that Kieslowski and particularly, the members of his crew had started showing the signs of fatigue in this quite a long project.

            This film comes back to the question of patronage again as it was the question in Decalogue Two or in the fourth one. It's quite important to understand the centrality of this question in the films of Decalogue series. This is quite a recurrent theme in most of theological texts and religious narratives too. In Mahabharata, the question of patronage of Karna is the most complex riddle of the entire text. In reality, he is the son of Princess Kunti, (the mother of Pandavas) who had disowned him because he was born outside wedlock. He was not the legitimate child; hence, he was discarded but destiny had other plans for him. He was raised by a commoner but out of sheer talent, he turned out to be an excellent archer equivalent to status of the Kings. Despite being the eldest brother of Pandavas (one of two sides of the Mahabharata war), he fought on the behalf of Kauravas (the other side of the war). He is symbolic of one human being fighting against himself. The collective wisdom of that contemporary society could not handle the question of heritage in just manner thus by resulting in a serious community fault lines and human suffering. That is why the question of heritage is both biological and ethical but it is rare to find a common platform. Kieslowski is aware of this rarity but he's also aware of its necessity. If one generation has to be responsible to the coming generation, it must solve this predicament. The heart of matter is that a parent is not confined to the biological and the ethical cannot be fully served only by parenthood. The link between past and future has to be a combination of the both.

            This film is a sad commentary on the poor human management of this eternal question. The central theme of this work of art revolves around three females, Ewa, Majka and Ania belonging to three continuous generations, with Ewa being the oldest and Ania being the youngest. The fact of the matter is that they are the grandmother, mother and granddaughter in a row but this biological fact has been concealed by a falsehood. Ania was born outside wedlock when Majka was only 16 years old. She fell in love with her school teacher, Wojtek who responded back. When she turned pregnant, her mother, Ewa, also the headmistress of the same school, tried to hide this. She threatened Wojtek with the legal action (of doing sex with a non-adult girl and impregnating her). She fleeced Majka with a false promise that her child will be hers once she completes her education. Majka was not a mature person to handle the complexity of her action. She did as dictated by her mother. The little infant was raised by Ewa thus transforming her into the mother instead of Majka. So, Ewa was a parental mother and Majka was the biological mother. Ewa was not fully supported by her husband, Stefan but he was too impotent to resist her from embracing a false identity. Similarly, Wojtek could not be a strong father who could contribute towards a solution of the issue of patronage. So, it becomes a story of sustained falsehood, sustained loss of natural fulfilment and sustained deepening of hatred between the two mothers.

            This film is woven around Majka’s attempt to regain her motherhood by stealing her daughter from Ewa, the unreal mother. She hopes to realise her denied identity by this action but Ania, the young girl of six years, is too habituated with her parental mother that Majka finds it almost impossible to replace her. To her, the question of identity of motherhood is more like a question of possession. She thinks that once she takes her daughter along with her, the natural love between a mother and daughter will automatically arise. She forgets that motherhood is not a political question rather it is an organic question. It can be handled only by a combination of reproduction and nourishment. Both these human ventures need to be cultivated and pursued over a long period of time in order to realise the fruits of motherhood. It's not just a legal question and not so simple that it can be handled by stealing the child the way a property is stolen.

            Majka refuses to understand the complexity of the question. She is obsessed with her own denial. Her sense of frustration provokes her to build imaginary theories directed against her mother. She regards her as a negative woman who has snatched her baby. As she was unable to have a second baby after Majka, she used the opportunity of Majka’s pregnancy in order to usurp her daughter's motherhood. During the film, we don't sympathise with Ewa either because she comes before us as a rigid and a bit selfish person. The child is torn between the two competing mothers who instead of nourishing her, keep on fighting and cursing each other. The beginning of this film is a sad visual of the girl’s screaming which is such a recurrent phenomena in her life that her innocence is silently suffering in her dream world. Kieslowski is quite brilliant in such a choice. The girl is too young to voice her anguish over her mothers in the state of awakening but her subconscious self is aware of this turmoil. That's why when she is really awake to that crisis during her dreams, she screams out of fear. Nobody around her is trying to understand the serious flaw behind her screaming nor is anybody questioning that.

            When Majka steals Ania from the theatre, she takes her to her ex-boyfriend and the girl's father, Wojtek who has left teaching and turned into a teddy bear maker. He is also an aspiring screenwriter without any success. He doesn't want to welcome Majka because he is aware of her immaturity and weakness but he doesn't deny them a stay. The hidden father in him is still alive but he doesn't find himself in a position to carry the burden of the same. He also mistrusts Majka. Initially, when he is not fully aware of Majka's long-term plans, he seems to be cooperative with her but later on, he suggests her to change plans as they are too drastic. He doesn't want the young girl to be harmed by her irresponsible mother. The moment he goes out for bringing a van to escort them back to their parents, Majka runs away with Ania from there.  When Wojtek comes back, he finds both missing. He immediately loses any sympathy for Majka. He cares more for Ania and informs her grandparents about her. From the one side, Majka’s parents come looking for her and from the other side, Wojtek goes looking for her. Majka tries a lot but she has a remote chance of escaping. There is only one train that shall take her out of her current station. This is also symbolic of her thinking that she thinks in terms of only either-or. As a result, there is only one way either forward or backward. Even Joseph Kickasola mentions, “If there has been a single theme throughout the series, it has been the complexity and difficulty of moral decisions. Majka’s black or white attitude is not clarity of moral vision but its obfuscation. Her dichotomous vision also tilts her toward biological determinism in Ania's case: Majka is the biological mother, and therefore all will be well when they are together. The truth, of course, is that Ania is as socially conditioned as any other human being, and she misses the “mother” who raised her. Though she is affectionate towards Majka but she will not call her mother despite Majka’s repeated and disparate requests. Likewise, Majka lacks any real power to comfort the girl.” Kieslowski is of the view that organic choices can't be fit into the instrumentalist categories of rationality. If we try that, there are only remote chances of escape. The railway station in this case as the only choice is what Majka is behaving from inside.

            Her mother, Ewa, on the other side is not much different from her. Her attitude towards Ania is like that of an addictive and possessive person. She's not ready to leave her at any cost before death. When she is negotiating with Majka over the custody of Ania, she is talking as if trying out a contractual deal. (Ania will be mine and yours. When I die, she will be all yours). Majka’s reverse condition that ‘she gives written permission for the child to go to Canada or she will ever see Ania again’ is a difficult one but suits her. Majka gives Ewa to count of five. She rushes through count and immediately hangs up. The connection snaps immediately before Ewa says, “Yes”. Also, there are gaps in Ewa’s character. We almost fail to understand why Majka has been continuously kept away from her daughter even after she has turned into an adult. Why she has been sent repeatedly to camps far away from home? Ewa is not an open person before us; we can only depend upon theories about her as presented by Majka. The heart of the matter is that the grandmother has stolen the motherhood of her daughter as if it was a right which she deserved more than that of her daughter. It is quite ironic that she is doing it to her own daughter. They are less of mothers and more of claimants. Kieslowski is brutally direct with eventual results of such choices.

            Majka takes shelter at the train station with a little help from a lady manager of the station. Interestingly, she's reading Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, a story of a woman with similar and unrealistic ideas of love and happiness. Perhaps,     she is symbolic of the tragic end going to happen to Majka. Her parents reach the station just before the train and they finally trace the kid and Majka. The girl runs to her “mother” but Majka runs to the train. She leaves everything with a hollow glance over her daughter who runs after her but nothing happens. The way Majka had lost her selfish mother symbolically, her daughter Ania loses her mother also. The seventh commandment aims to assert that the relations built on the foundation of selfishness and falsehood shall always breed permanent forms of isolation and alienation.

Decalogue and Mahabharata-10

Till now, we have not specifically discussed the nature of characters in the films of Decalogue. To begin with it, one thing can be straightaway said about them is that they are not greatness-incarnated characters. In the terms of Hollywood, they are not the heroes or heroines of cinema. There is nothing outstanding about them. They are not extremely beautiful, they are not extremely ugly, they are not extremely pure and they're not extremely bad. If you begin with the first film of the series, the scientist father is a good researcher but not a good Christian. In the second film, Dorota is an impulsive & selfish woman but she is trying to be ethical towards her own future. The doctor is a good person but he betrays his Hippocratic Oath and gives a judgement against the possibility of survival of the patient who actually survives. Though he happens to save the unborn child yet he doesn't come to us as a great doctor. In the third film, both the lovers are always on the verge of promiscuity though they never cross it. They share a mixture of love and hate for each other. In fourth film, the father and daughter embark upon an experiment which they don't have capacity to handle. They are overstepping their limits though they happen to come to their senses finally. They are always vulnerable. In the fifth film, one may tend to hate both the taxi driver and the murderer but Kieslowski inserts certain elements in their actions and gestures that one always have second thoughts about their real nature.  They can be characterized by ambiguity, openness and indeterminacy equating it almost to the liminal state of being. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent thus bringing about disorientation. Liminality is also a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behaviour are relaxed - a situation which can lead to new perspectives for both viewer and the actor. This state is equally extended to his choice of locations, colours and status of the characters.

This kind of treatment of characters is quite enhanced by a special narrative style of Kieslowski. He doesn't try to give historical details of his characters. They happen to come across a dramatic situation without any single causative agent behind; rather their location is put before us in a natural but strange manner that they can come from anywhere. Does it mean to say that Kieslowski didn't believe in the history? I think the answer is that to him, history is not a mono-linear track of time but a complex intermixing of different tracks of time both private and public. This makes the process of decoding history quite a difficult one rather an impossible one. That makes him a bit distrustful of history. That's why his characters don't carry a clearly recognisable mark of history but it is obvious that they do have a history. Kieslowski seems to believe more in the invisible history rather than the visible one. This makes his dramatis personae vague and common.

In the sixth film of the Decalogue series, we again come across the similar nature of characters. It's a story of two characters; one is a teenage boy, Tomek who is a post office clerk and the other is a sensuous woman, Magda. On the outset, it can be said that it's a story of peeping Tom and a woman with loose reputation but it is much more than that. It is also a story of an unbridgeable gap between sex and love. It is also a story on the brittle nature of contemporary human life where individuals are suffering with alienation from wider society. It is also a story of mediation of technology in determining human emotions, its limits and its possibilities. It is also a story between a man and a woman who are failing in their enterprise of love. The possibility of so many themes makes this film a multilayered film. The very first scene of the film begins with both the characters’ face-to-face in a post office. It's rare in Decalogue that Kieslowski introduced his characters without any abstraction. He sets a limit to the expansion of the story in the beginning and then he marches into his natural style of visual abstraction. This is also a hint that he regards both the characters not like an immature teenager and a mature but voluptuous woman rather he thinks them on the platform of two equals. This film explores the space between the two without any interference from the third person. The very next scene is like an ocean of blue light in which Tomek appears. He is immersed in the desire of love for a woman who lives on the opposite side of the housing complex at a location which is ideal to watch if done through a telescope. He breaks into a laboratory and steals a telescope from there. The long focus lens of the instrument becomes an extension of his personality because this is the only tool through which he can peep into the private life of his desired woman. She is a beautiful woman with a capacity to arouse the latent lust of a man. Is it her strength or weakness? We don't know but she enjoys her freedom but Tomek wants to be a part of her life. He's an average-looking, under confident boy who has the dream of a woman who is much mature and experienced than him.

The eye of the lens and the ‘I’ of Tomek have got intermixed into one and they have created a virtual realm of fulfilment. The phone is the additional supplement in his realm. He is transcending the limits of sight and sound through the means of technology. Kieslowski has never believed in the dichotomy of subject/object or self/other. The creation of virtual/real is itself a serious obstruction in the eventual elevation of his desire which wants to shift from scopic to organic. Here, lies the danger and here, begins his trauma. He is watching Magda’s life every day. He's almost pursuing her like a shadow. He steals her letters, he puts money order notices secretly in her mailbox, he becomes a milkman for her, he tries to stop her and her lover from sexual union by false phone call of gas leak. He's watching her in all possible shades of her behaviour. Perhaps, she even herself doesn't know that she has become a full-blown text for somebody who is reading her every moment. Gradually, Tomek’s life is becoming inseparable from her life though she's not participating like an active intentional agent. Her beauty, privacy and agony, all get transferred to him. Slowly, he understands the poverty of scopic tools available at his disposal. He feels the lonely side of the woman, her alienation and her desperation to live a full life. He realises that she is much more than an object of visual titillation. Finally, when she has a tiff with the lady postmaster over the money order notices, he confesses before her that he is the peeping Tom in her life. She gets shocked and feels repulsive for him. This is also a shock for Tomek because he felt so concerned about her pain and suffering that he wanted to tell her that he could share that and bring her a bit of joy.

With single stroke, he has driven himself out of his virtual security into the real risky domain. Now, he is also a threat for her; he symbolises a breach of privacy for her; he is an undeserving partner in her life. But she is not an immature person; she wants to get rid of this interloper. She stops and questions him when he comes to deliver the milk. He opens his heart and says that he loves her. She reacts very coldly and asks, “What does he want from her, a kiss or sexual intercourse? He's too naive for these blunt practicalities of lovemaking. He seems to want nothing but love; he invites her for a date and she agrees. He seems so happy that he fails to see through the nature of her acceptance. They meet in a cafe and he tells all the details of what he had seen of her life in the last one year of peeping. He gives her back the letters sent by her boyfriend. She is not feeling anything positive for him but she wants to know how much he really knows about. Otherwise, he seems to be an intelligent boy who knows multiple languages and is quite good in memory. She tricks into a night game with her in her apartment. She excites him sexually but he is a very immature person in sexual matters. She plays with him, arouses him and he loses his control and ejaculates prematurely. She says a bit sarcastically, “that’s all there is of love. Clean yourself up in the bathroom; there is a towel.” He feels a sense of both betrayal and humiliation. In full desperation, he runs away from there. He has been demolished through power of sex. The paradox of situation is that sex is a liminal act and love is always a possibility of transcendence. The realm of threshold can also be a realm of risk and betrayal. This is what happens to Tomek. The fact of the matter is that he has gone beyond his scopophilic addiction. Magda is no more a visual object for him rather she is both a possibility of redemption and affection for him but she demolishes that hope with the sheer brutal power of her sexual strength.

Once Tomek leaves like that, she realises her mistake but she doesn't know how to talk to him again. On the other side, Tomek is not able to tolerate the stigma of a failed lover. He slits his veins and allows himself to die but his friend's mother (with whom he is staying) happens to know the truth and manages to save the boy. Magda  keeps trying to control the damage but cannot. She goes to the post office but she doesn't find him; she enquires from the postman about what happened to him and comes to know of the reality. Her sense of guilt increases. She wants to meet him but doesn't know where he is. She goes to different hospitals but fails to find him. Finally, she goes to his home and meets the old lady. The lady is aware of the entire episode; she's a bit hateful with her and calls her a bad luck for him. Magda returns with a heavy heart but keeps hoping that Tomek will be back. In the end, she meets him at the post office but he reacts coldly, “He is no more peeping at her.” Now, it's his turn of humiliation. This film is a tragic one. It shows both the characters as the victims of a desire unsupported by the real dialogue, sustained effort and non-dependence of technology. In this sense, it is also commentary on the failure of technology to reimburse the sectors of human alienation. Too much belief in the instruments coupled with desire for instant realisation is a malady that afflicts contemporary civilisation. Kieslowski is bitter about that. He exhibits the impossibility of equivalence between the nonhuman element of technology and the supra-human factors of life.

Decalogue and Mahabharata-9

For the last couple of films, my commentary doesn't seem to invoke many examples from Mahabharata. That is the precise question I'm trying to answer that we don't need to remember a story of Mahabharata in order to invoke the spirit of Mahabharata. The entire enterprise of writing this monograph is focused on that Mahabharata is more than a text as Decalogue is more than a film project. Whenever we create something, the moment it is created, it becomes the other. It turns itself into an alien subject. In order to own it, we have to resurrect it but this resurrection is a continuous process. I read Mahabharata ten years back and after that, I could not find the energy to revisit the entire Mahabharata once again though there was always a haunting memory of widest possible experience that this text gave me. This cannot be counted in terms of number of stories that are contained in this text. It cannot be understood in terms of number of theological extracts that this text has. Despite that, the experience of Mahabharata is a rare entity which always needs to be re-explored and reinvented. That is what was provided by Kieslowski's Decalogue. The way it is possible to forget a story out of the hundred stories of Mahabharata, it is also possible to forget to link the films and stories of both the works of excellence. I'm more interested in the philosophical experience that these works generate in us.

Before I begin to discuss the fifth film of the Decalogue series, I would also like to point out that a story is a microcosm of people and emotions but the form of a story can also lock the audience into certain meanings and non-meanings. The empty space between two stories, the common space between two stories and the live link between two stories are the meta-narrative tools that a human being can use to create a possible experience. That is why Kieslowski and Vyasa are less of persons to us rather they are more of performers to us. They have created works which have the capacity to transform a reader into a performer who performs through his vision and conception.

The fifth film is based upon the fifth Commandment, “thou shall not kill”. In the first four films, we rarely entered into the political domain of the human beings. All four of them belonged to an emotional domain. The fifth film is the political film of the Decalogue series. It is political not in the sense of a plot woven around power struggle but it is political from Kieslowski's point of view. He has come to us as a director who avoids making political statements through his films. When he left the realm of documentaries, he wanted to go beyond the social realism picturized in political films. We don't want to say that Kieslowski is coming back to that realism. He is as solid in his abstraction as he was earlier. The film is political because it is a direct attack on capital punishment and the law which supports the sentence of death. He is a deeply humanist person who challenges the legal determinism that tries to protect the majority by refusing a minority the right to live. His film is actually a text on theory of resistance. Joseph Kickasola also supports that “the central concern of the film is the deep ground from which evil emerges. Kieslowski and Piesiewicz do not attempt to find an answer to this age-old problem but they ask as blatantly and unflinchingly as any filmmaker in history.”

As it is usual with Decalogue, all of his films are micro-films in the sense that they deal only with a couple or more characters; this film is also concerned with just three characters of Polish life. One is a taxi driver, Waldemar, another is a murderer, Jacek and third one is a young lawyer, Piotr. In this film, the taxi driver is brutally murdered by Jacek during a robbery. He is caught by the police and all evidence goes against him. The local court sentences him to death and High Court rejects the appeal. His case is fought by the young lawyer who is deadly against the capital punishment. He is motivated, brilliant and professional but despite that, he loses the case. He is the moral anchor of the film. The film begins with his monologue on legal theory. It says, “the law should not imitate nature ......... it should improve nature.” even the film ends with his crying, “I abhor it.” he undergoes two kinds of examinations in this film, he succeeds in the first and fails in the second. The first gives the identity of a lawyer and the second one hurts his identity as a human being. He is the soul of the film. During a scene in the film, after the judgement was delivered, he goes privately to the judge and asks him whether he did anything wrong while defending his case. The judge answers back that his defence was the best he had heard in his years. Perhaps, he feels himself to be responsible for the sentence. This is a situation when the lawyer and the judge are both facing serious dilemma over their personal capacities that transformed them into a pygmy before the giant of Law.

Kieslowski paints the entire film through the taxi driver and the murderer in such a way that we rarely come across a feeling where one seems better than the other except the point of murder. Both of them share a common dislike by their fellow beings. Both are sadistic. The taxidriver, Waldemar is a person who seems to be of low character. Somebody from the top of the housing complex throws a rag over him indicating the prevalence of scorn for him. The way he looks at the salesgirl, it sounds lecherous and repulsive. He refuses a couple (the surviving husband and Dorota from Decalogue Two) the chance to hire his taxi for no reason despite the urgency. He plays pranks with innocent animals and people. Though he shares a piece of bread with a stray dog but he doesn't seem to arouse any kind of sympathy for him. On a similar vein, Jacek presents a picture of a very blunt, selfish and a heartless human being. He ignores the request of an old lady who is feeding the pigeons rather he deliberately drives them away from the scene. He doesn't try to save an innocent person from thugs, he doesn't law a father and a son an opportunity to board the taxi. He seems to like young girls but the reason is not very clear though it gets out in the last.

Not just these two characters but the entire atmosphere of the film is a bit repulsive. The cinematographer of the film, Slawomir Idziak chooses green filters in such a manner that the entire look of the film is bleak. In an interview, he mentioned that the filters were used to evoke the thought of urine. All the colours of the film are dull. The faces are grey and the light is without any lustre. Even the morning and afternoon present a hopeless scenario. Piesiewicz had one said about Decalogue that the period of the communism had destroyed the holistic nature of Polish heritage. Everything was so broken up that the only way remaining was to return to the elementary values. Were there really operational in a hopeless Poland? The look of the film is the look of the Poland. Perhaps, even the hundred countries of this world are as good as Poland. That makes Kieslowski at once global and Polish too.

The film is divided into two parts. In the first one, it is focused upon how the act of murder is carried out. The second one is focused upon how the act of judgement and hanging of convict are carried out. In the first part, we rarely find any platform upon which we can measure the human worth of taxi driver and the murderer. If the taxi driver is selfish, the murderer generates a sense of callousness. There is not any serious reason behind murder except robbery but the way it is carried out, shows the hidden evil of the person. The audience fails to understand how this evil is so sharp and poisonous because Kieslowski does not point out any serious historical detail of the process. He gives certain hints in the end that Jacek, the murderer was in a state of self-hatred because of an accident earlier in his life. He loved his young sister a lot but she was killed by a tractor driven by his friend just after they had a session of drinking. He found himself responsible for the death of his sister. He developed such repulsion for himself that he ran away from his house and fell into evil hands. Those years of dirty life made him so heartless that he kept on killing the taxi driver first by rope, then by a rod and finally by a stone till he died. On a visible level, it was a cold blooded murder but on an invisible level, it was a result of a deep-rooted social sickness prevalent in Polish society.

The second part of the film is roughly an equivalent of the first one because there is also a cold-blooded legally justified murder. This is as repulsive an act of killing as the first one was. Kieslowski is painting both the acts through very stark reality. There is only one soft element that is operational through the lawyer. He goes to meet Jacek just before his death. This Jacek is a totally different personality to what we had seen in the first part. He's a normal guy who is fearful of death. He thinks of his mother, his sister and his past. He expresses his last desire to be buried next to his father's grave because his sister, the only spiritual anchor of his life, is also buried there. He had got developed a bigger picture of his sister in a photo lab. He gives the receipt of that lab to the lawyer and requests him to hand over that photo to her mother. In other words, he is seeking forgiveness from his mother through this gesture. He is trying to redeem himself but does Law give him the opportunity to redeem? The lawyer and Kieslowski are deadly against this kind of non-opportunity because they feel that human beings are a social product of not just their present but also of the past. To reduce such a complex human history into an individual dead-end is like a murder of humanity. The punishment should reform and awaken the possibilities; it should not delete them permanently.

Decalogue and Mahabharata-8

            Whenever the cinema or Kieslowski is discussed, we have to face one major problem. We have a natural tendency to develop a structure of thought but his films are actually an experiential phenomena. They have a flow like character that defies any kind of structure around it. In total contrast to that, the realm of morality is actually a realm of structure where certain things are included and the certain are excluded. An experienced can expand but a structure cannot without collapsing or restructuring. This kind of mixed nature of experience and knowledge gives a certain kind of definition and content to the history. That is why Jacques Derrida in “The Gift of Death” says, “History can neither be a decidable object not a totality capable of being mastered, precisely because it is tied to responsibility, to faith, and to the gift.”

The fourth film of the Decalouge series is thematically most dangerous risk Kieslowski ever took in the entire project. He is problematizing the relationship of a father and a daughter in such a manner that they find themselves on the verge of an incestuous beginning. Kieslowski begins with his usual style of keeping characters almost hidden from the audience. He does not introduce a character with an identity. He inserts an element of uncertainty around that person and keeps the audience guessing who the person can be and what the relationship of that person with the other is. Kieslowski is not a director who wants to make things easy for the audience. He is putting a lot of questions in the beginning and the spectator is trying to adapt himself according to the situation. What Kieslowski is doing to us is developing a science of uncertainty in total juxtaposition to the science of certainty that we are used to.

The film opens with a playful girl soaking a middle-aged man with water. The scene carries a sign of indulging relationship and the audience feel a bit confused about who they can be. The moment we come to know that they are a father, Michal and a daughter, Anna, we feel bemused. Though it settles the question of identity yet it keeps the moral self in an uncomfortable situation. It's not without an irony that it is also Easter Monday, the day after Easter. The Christians have always celebrated this day as the day of resurrection. On this day, people celebrate, enjoy, play pranks and eat lamb. The Easter water from the previous day is mixed with perfume and is generally gifted by the men to their women. The scene of Anna putting water over her sleeping father and her father doing the same to her creates a symbolic confusion which is the exactly the theme of the film. It's a confusion concerned with the reversal of moral limits of human beings. In somewhat different manner, Joseph Kickasola terms the role of intentionality in definition of human relationships as the core issue  of the film but Kieslowski is such a semblance of plurality that a dozen people can put across different views without disagreeing. It can easily be said also that incest is the central theme of this work or the search for perfect lover by a woman is the main theme of the film. To put matters across, it would be better to understand that in eyes of Kieslowski, a film creates a theory of truth and not vice versa. Truth is more in performance than in representation. On a visible level, this film is based upon the fourth Commandment which says, “Honour thy father and your mother” but on performative level, the message seems to be an ethically complex issue. The human beings do have a sense of freedom in defining their relationships but this freedom is not unlimited. It is confined to certain subjective limits, subjective not just in a personal sense but also in the universal sense.

            “My father left on a plane which I could not see properly” is the symptomatic set of words Anna tells Doctor about the problem she is facing. Her problem is essentially a problem of vision. She is not able to situate her father on the plane of fatherliness. There is a certain blur in it which she wants to get corrected but she does not know how. I have said it earlier also that the Kieslowski seems to believe in a theory that there is everything in everything. There is a complete film in one dialogue of the film. There is complete visuality of the film in one image of the film. There is a complete sound of the film in one note of the film. His choice of dialogues as supported by Pieseiwicz is brilliant if we keep this particular theoretical frame in our mind. Anna comes across a letter written by her mother in the drawer of her father. There is written “to be opened after my death”. She feels the urgent need to know the truth in it but if she does it, she goes against her father's right to privacy. After dithering a lot, she finally breaks this threshold (the way her father broke her right to privacy by listening over her phone talk with her boyfriend) and cuts the letter but the paradox is that there is another sealed envelope in it upon which is written, “For my daughter, Anna.” She wants to open this envelop also but she is intercepted on the river bank by the Theophanes who comes carrying a kayak on his head. He gives her a questioning glance which stops from moving ahead but the problem is not solved. There is a mystery in the letter. What kind of truth the mother would have tried to conceal? Is she really the daughter of the person she is living with? Is it really the secret which her mother would have wanted to hide? Anna is a brilliant theatre artist who is acutely aware of the problem she faces but she does not know the solution. In her classroom, she is enacting a love scene with the class fellow before her class teacher but she is not compatible with the young guy but the moment her older teacher enacts that role with her, the magic comes instantly to the scene. She's disturbed over why this happens.  She tries to search her mother's belongings so that she can find a clue to the mystery. She comes across a photograph showing the mother with some male friends but none of them resembles her father. Even when she asks her father's long-time friend about her mother how she looked, he answers back “exactly like you.” If she is just like her mother what fact of her mother is still an unknown fact? The quest to find an answer drives her down into an apparently unethical course of action. She has already started with the betrayal of faith in her father. She forges the handwriting of her mother by assuming that she knows that her mother knows and as a result, she is what her mother was. She assumes that she knows the content of the letter and starts acting accordingly. The message of the letter is that her father is not really her father; she is the daughter of somebody else. Here, begins the turmoil of both the characters.

When the father comes back from his foreign visit, she recites before him the exact wording of the letter. He's shocked and angry. He slaps her and goes to home without her. His shock is over the loss of identity of fatherhood. We can understand that identities are not absolute but it does not mean that they are not necessary. They are as much important to a human being as intrinsic a relationship is. At home, his anger is not subsiding. He slams the disturbing door as if it is mocking him down. The daughter is in the same mood over the loss of identity of being a daughter. Now, it's a beginning of the clash of two losses. Are they really losses or imagined losses? The Kieslowski is testing the limits of the characters. Before they reach home, they happen to meet in the lift of their housing complex. He feels sorry for slapping her and here, enters the Doctor of Decalogue II. He has a history of healing without actually knowing that he can really heal. It's again an intersection of one form of history with the other form of history. Kieslowski is reminding us continuously that the element of responsibility of one's action can never be avoided or evaded. It has to be there like a shadow rather more like an active interface.

Anna and Michal return home. She asks from him whether he knew the contents of the letter. He answers in negative but expresses a possibility of doubt in her mother’s relationships. His doubt can be actually a doubt of a man against a woman because he can never be sure of biological parentage of their baby. Only a woman can know the fact because of her intrinsic organic structure. But this doubt of her father is taken by Anna as a doubt of a hesitant lover. She forsakes the hierarchical relationship of parent and child and starts treating her father like an equal. She smokes with him, drinks with him and even goes to the extent of sexually inviting him. Michal feels extremely painful about that but does not lose the patience and the discipline of a father though he accepts that he is not a pure father in terms of purity of love. Anna tries to go into this as a possibility of shift of identities because she's trying to solve the question of a perfect lover. To her, Michal is the closest to that ideal but fatherly love cannot be equated with orgiastic activity. She tries to transfer her moral confusion over to her father but in the end, fatherliness prevails and they resurrect their father-daughter bond. Next day, she wakes with her father absent. She feels the loss again and looks for him and finds him leaving. She runs after him and tells him that everything she told about that letter was a total concoction and feels sorry. She asks him the reason for leaving and jokingly, it turns out that he is only going to buy the milk. Finally, they burn the letter and along with it, also burn the moral confusion that arose with it.