Steven Watts-Decalogue

The thing that I found to be most interesting about the movie Decalogue was that it provided you with an experience and a scenario that caused you to really stop and think about the questions that were being brought into the light. This film used the ten commandments as a basis for the short films that we viewed in class. We watched the films that related to thou shall not kill and thou shall have no gods above me. The first decalogue, Thou Shalt not kill, it tells the story of a young boy whose life was falling apart after his involvement in the accidental death of his sister. He then goes on to kill a taxi driver that ends up being a well known criminal himself. This is where the film really begins to show its strengths for storytelling. It provides us with the scenario of this young mans life and forces ourselves to question our own beliefs and ethics in regards to this specific situation. We are left with the question of whether or not it makes it better that the man he killed was already a wanted criminal, or is it justified to punish a murderer by sentencing him to death? The way that this film used the technique of midrashim to relate these conflicts to our current environment, is something that really pulls the theme of this film together. Decalogue  forces us to reflect on the things that we may not question in our lives, and to really focus on what we believe to be right and wrong in our own hearts and minds.