Dekalog III

Dekalog III tackles the least dramatic of the commandments: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Yet Kieślowski still manages to turn it into something devastating.

The story unfolds on Christmas Eve. After attending midnight mass and playing Santa Claus for his children, a taxi driver named Janusz answers the door to find his former lover, Ewa. She claims her husband has gone missing and asks Janusz to help search for him. Janusz tells his wife his taxi has been stolen and heads out into the night with Ewa.

They wander through Warsaw chasing fragments of a story that never adds up. Janusz grows increasingly eager to return home, but Ewa keeps him close by planting small clues and prolonging the search. Eventually, Janusz understands that something is wrong but says nothing.

At seven the next morning, Ewa confesses. She is no longer married. Her husband left after her affair with Janusz and has built a new life. The search was a fabrication. She had devised a private ritual: If she could keep Janusz away from his family until seven, something might be restored. If she failed, she planned to kill herself.

Intellectually, this episode feels thinner than the first two. Emotionally, it cuts deep because of its portrait of loneliness. Ewa reaches out to Janusz because she cannot bear being alone. Early on, when her senile aunt asks after her husband, the emptiness is visible in her eyes. In her apartment, the razor and other belongings left behind by her husband years earlier underscore her loneliness. The deserted Warsaw streets amplify the isolation.

Janusz is lonely in his own way. He notices the cracks in Ewa’s story yet stays with her. He claims to want his family, but spends the sacred hours of the night elsewhere. Perhaps temptation offers a brief escape from routine.

Even Janusz’s wife carries her own loneliness. We see her only briefly, but it’s enough. She does not believe the taxi has been stolen, yet she lets Janusz go. When he returns, she asks whether he will spend the rest of the night with Ewa again. There is loneliness in her knowledge of what happened before.

One of the most harrowing moments comes when Janusz drives directly toward an oncoming tram, swerving at the last second. Ewa wants the crash to happen. I wonder how many people carry that same feeling.