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Long Summer's Journey Through
"Decalogue"
[June 30: Parts I and II]
By Matthew Prins
I'm only four-tenths through "Decalogue," but I suspect
that the defining image for the entire work came in
"Decalogue, Two." The conception is a half-filled glass
with two items in it: a spoon and a bug. The bug squirms
in the water, starts climbing the spoon, falls, starts
climbing again, wiggles, falls, swims around, climbs,
climbs, slips, falls. In the film, the image is shown as a
metaphor for a man valiantly trying to overcome death, but
it could also be interpreted as the way the characters
throughout "Decalogue" try to overcome God and morality:
wiggling around in a confused pattern, clumsily slipping,
never graceful.
"Decalogue, Two," for example, is the story of a woman who
has a grave moral decision to make. She is pregnant; her
husband is impotent. Her husband is unaware of her
pregnancy, for he is gravely ill. If he survives, and she
has the child, he'll find out she had an affair. She has
two obvious options: having an abortion, losing her only
chance at a child [1]; or telling her husband the truth
about the affair.
But moral decisions in Decalogue are never that graceful.
She decides to take option three: she confronts the doctor
treating her husband, and asks the doctor if her husband
will survive. The doctor says he doesn't know for sure if
he will come through. The wife reveals her dilemma and
pushes the doctor for an answer, saying that she'll have to
go and have the abortion if the doctor isn't able to tell
her if her husband will survive or not. In the next couple
days, after reexamining the patient and thinking about his
own past, the doctor gives her an answer. But nothing is
ever pat in "Decalogue." The doctor is not an omnipotent
God, and moral decisions can lead to unexpected
consequences. The Ten Commandments are clear; their
implications are often not.
A belief system where science is held up above God is the
focus of the first two parts of "Decalogue." In part two,
it's the belief that medicine has the absolute power to
determine when and how people will die.
In part one, it's the tenet that science has all the
answers to the exclusion of everything else, including God.
In that segment, a man and his genius son use logic to
determine everything. The father is a relapsed Catholic,
having made the moral decision to use science as his God
and guide years ago. The father and son develop systems to
understand the world, whether it be chess, or the weather,
or kitchen appliances. But there is an accident [2].
Science fails them. The act that leads to a catastrophe is
not a sin in itself, but it is symbolic of the spuriousness
that trusting completely in science can lead to. The
father is not against the belief in God -- the child's aunt
is setting up religious lessons for the son, and the father
does not object -- but he sees no use for Him in his own
worldview. That unbelief in the unseen, God and His
miracles, is his downfall.
Do I, as do the characters in "Decalogue, One," believe in
science over God? Unfortunately, sometimes. In theory, I
believe God can overcome gravity; in practice, if someone
said to me that God had levitated them above the ground for
30 seconds, I'd be undeniably, unbelievably skeptical. I
don't know if I would believe it was God even if I
levitated about the ground for 30 seconds; I'd probably
think that I was hallucinating, or that it was a freak
accident of nature, not that God was lifting me up.
Catholics, more than evangelical and ecumenical
Protestants, have a healthy respect for miracles. Perhaps
we Protestants, especially we Protestants who are keen on
big-E Evolution [3], sometimes forget that science can't
explain away everything. I certainly do.
(Coming July 7th: A look at segments three and four of
"Decalogue." If you'd like to comment on this series,
please go to our "Decalogue" forum or e-mail Mr. Prins at mdprins@yahoo.com.)
[1] Well, until the next affair, at least.
[2] I'm being purposefully vague at this point. I'm trying
to strike a balance: I want to intrigue those of not
watching "Decalgoue" to go rent it, but I also don't want
to give away the surprises "Decalogue" has in store. (And
so far, all the episodes except the first have ended with a
startling revelation.)
[3] Little-e evolution, which just about everyone believes
in, states that plants and animals evolve over hundreds and
thousands of years into slightly different plants and
animals. Big-E Evolution, the controversial kind, says
that little-e evolution is what caused the plants and
animals we see today to exist, rather than, say, God
creating them in six days.