Dekalog [dir. Krysztof Kieslowski]

No, you're not going to find this on your favorite streaming channel (at least in India, although if you do, let me know so I can sign up too). Dekalog (or The Decalogue) was a 10-episode anthology serial made for Polish television in the late 80's by Krysztof Kieslowski (later known for The Double Life of Veronique and the Three Colors trilogy). It is predominantly set in a housing complex, and each hour-long episode is a self-contained that deals with one person / family. Dekalog is a loose reflection on the significance of the biblical Ten Commandments in modern existence.

By loosely, I mean that it's not easy to pigeonhole an episode as a rumination over a specific commandment. And that is as it should be, because life's moral dilemmas rarely come with convenient labels or pat resolutions. A wife demands to know if her critically ill husband will survive, because that will decide whether she keeps or aborts the child from a lover. A daughter may have found that the man she regards as her father may not be so; would that legitimize her incestuous feelings towards him? An impotent husband who suggests his wife take on a lover finds himself less equanimous when he discovers that she may have done so. A woman drags a former lover from his family on Christmas eve because she has been long abandoned by her husband and is jealous of having to spend that time of traditional joy alone. The most famous episode of Dekalog, and one of two that were expanded by the director to feature-length, deals with two killings - the first, in which a young man brutally strangles a cab-driver for no apparent reason, and the second, in which said young man is hanged by the state with apparently equal callousness. It is credited as being instrumental in the abolition of the death penalty in Poland.

Like the individual apartment blocks of a building complex, each episode is self-contained, yet contains strands that link it to other episodes. A lead character in one story may make a fleeting cameo appearance in another. The outline of one story may be referred to in passing elsewhere. The effect is to create a rich tapestry of this microcosm of a civilization. As with James Joyce's Dubliners or Rohinton Mistry's Tales from Firozesha Baag, the individual parts are worthy in themselves, but the sum is significantly greater.

For this of course, thematic unity becomes essential. This comes primarily from Kieslowski's direction. Originally the idea was that he and his co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz (a lawyer when Kieslowski met him in the course of conceiving a documentary on legal trials) would script the episode and leave the direction to young film-makers looking to prove their mettle. But as the project progressed, Kieslowski either grew more possessive or realized the power of the material, and helmed the whole anthology, giving it a unifying vision. His musical collaborator Zbigniew Preisner provides an additional emotional anchor with the minimal main theme and the haunting pieces for the individual episodes (abetted by the great "Van Den Budenmayer").

With ample justification, the series made Kieslowski's name internationally and gave him the opportunity to become the universally respected artist he deserved to be. Dekalog was and continues to be a landmark of what television could be when it is not geared to gratify instant cravings, when it is not the idiot-box.