Dekalog as Decameron

Abstract

It is always wise, when confronted with a mass frenzy of interpretation, to sober up on purely formal problems. I will therefore approach Kieslowski’s philosophical enigmas by way of a little structural analysis, of the now old-fashioned kind. Actually, it is to the Russian Formalist tradition that we owe what is perhaps the most dazzling narrative analysis in the canon¹. To begin with that would constitute an acknowledgment of the peculiar kinship of the episodes of the Dekalog with the short story as a form, radically different as they are in temporality and in plot resolution with the standard-length feature film, about which one does not want to decide whether its kinship lies with the novel or not, but which at least arouses very different generic expectations, that any perceived kinship with short-story form tends to frustrate (just as it is frustrated in another way by theatricality and the limitations of the filmed play).