Dekalog 1

Dekalog 1, - Krystoff Kieslowski A young boy living alone with his father begins asking questions concerning mortality and faith, through his wide and pale blue eyes we come to share the same tender curiosity. It is this inquisitive innocence that becomes the deceptively simple focus of the film’s human – and excruciatingly tragic – drama. This is the first Kieslowski film I’ve seen, and it reminded my of the later Dardenne brothers – evoking the same sincere portrayal of believably real characters, in upsettingly real situations. However, this felt more poeticised with its ability to invite a more abstract and metaphysical atmosphere – lingering in close ups of expressions and intuitively using transitions of focus and colour to suffuse its realism with an immersive language of mood. Ghostly, profoundly observed and intensely, heart wrenchingly tragic. A film that, if you claim to be in possession of any sort of pulse or breath, will stay with you – repeating its melancholy images in an echoed memory that, mysteriously/mercilessly, seem to get more significant and sorrowful with each recollection.  10/10 [ have also now watched 2 and 3 – nether being quite as good as the first, but still very involving dramas]