Krzysztof Kieslowski-Dekalog 4 (1988)

"Honour thy father and thy mother". Young Anka and her father have lived together since her mother's death, and have always been more like close friends than father and daughter. One day, Anka discovers a letter from her mother whose contents make her question her whole relationship with her father… if that's indeed who he is. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0094986/plotsummary)




"How long have you known it?" asks Anka, giving voice to her emotions. She bears marks of suffering in her face. Her eyes are veiled with tears. "I don't know for certain, but I have always suspected it," Michal answers, "it doesn't matter anyway, you've been always my daughter for me!" "You have deceived me. But you should have told it to me!" tells Anka with a quiver in her voice, cutting a long story short. Sprinkled with a sublime and intense poetic vein, imbued with a touch of adolescential romanticism, full of subtle little nuances and pulsating waves of musicality, the Dekalog 4:"Honour thy father and thy mother" is a despairing example of an uncommon and ambiguous father-daughter relationship close to being incestuous, named "Elektra complex", a feeling of deep affective attraction similar to Oedipus complex with both sex-roles reversed. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0094986/usercomments)




Kieslowski describes with great clearness of mind the shadows of passion and the anomalous attitude of mind of a teenager who "clings to love-life" with all the impetuousness of her young age, showing an air of contemptuous indifference and disdainful attitude, completely scornful about any codes for moral behavior and ethics, taking great pleasure in hurting his father's feelings and urged by her restlessness to make spiteful and irreversible death choices (a procured abortion) to take her revenge against a kind of paternal affection mistaken for morbid love. Dekalog 4 is a real life drama comparable to a Pandora's box spreading ill-smelling effluvia all over the troubled world of two human beings caught in perverse trap and bound to come to a painful compromise, on the point of facing a future full of uncertainties as regards their relationship. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0094986/usercomments)




So the two characters are trapped in a net made of subtle cause-effect concatenations, woven by the director himself to divert the course of the story in a moral and ethical direction, turning a juvenile passion into an intense, palpable frustration in consequence of an unsuccessful crossing of the last moral divide. The unavoidable generational conflict is outlined without eschewing authorial involvement, bringing back some suffering Bergmanian memories of life but lived with a less despairing soul predisposition, far from any "Munchian screams". (http://imdb.com/title/tt0094986/usercomments)




The open rebellion against a distressing existential pilgrimage of souls in torment and the precarious human condition in search of opportunities assume a different aspect in Kieslowski who, even if skeptical of any religious problems, bestows a touch of decisional attitude on his characters to allow them to make less defeatist choices and to face life with serenity. Maybe the best episode of the whole Dekalog series: "between the fire of the passion and his fire-extinguisher patiently arranged" says a famous French movie critic. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0094986/usercomments)






Links to previous movie posts:

From 1# to 170# please refer to page :
170 Miche...one di una donna (1982)
171 Erick... rêvée des anges (1998)
172 Mikló...ép ('Red Psalm') (1972)
173 F.W. ...onie des Grauens (1922)
174 Werne...hantom der Nacht (1979)
175 Peter... & Her Lover (1989)
176 Yasuj... ('Tokyo Story') (1953)
177 Abbas...aste of Cherry') (1997)
178 Bertrand Bonello-Le Pornographe (2001)
179 Franç...imait les femmes (1977)
180 György Pálfi-Hukkle (2002)
181 Gillo...taglia di Algeri (1966)
182 Paolo...e di San Lorenzo (1982)
183 Aleksandr Dovzhenko-Arsenal (1928)
184 Béla ...eister harmóniák (2000)
185 Jean-Claude Lauzon - Léolo (1992)
186 Otar Iosseliani-Pastorali (1975)
187 Chris Marker-Sans soleil (1982)
188 Krzysztof Kieslowski-Dekalog 4 (1988)