Dekalog VII

I’ve reached the seventh commandment: Thou shalt not steal. Kieślowski asks us to consider what stealing really is. Straightforward, right? You take something that doesn’t belong to you without permission. But here he blurs the line.

The backstory to Dekalog VII is that Ewa, the mother of 22-year-old Majka, was the headmistress of a school where she hired a literature professor, Wojtek. Wojtek met and seduced Majka when she was 16. She got pregnant and had a daughter, Ania. But because of the “scandal” of it all, Majka was forced to pretend that Ania was actually her little sister.

We learn all of this through the action. In short, Majka kidnaps her own daughter, Ania. Later, she tells her mother, Ewa, that she robbed her of motherhood.

Now, we don’t know whether the 16-year-old Majka wanted to be a mother in any real sense. And we cannot say with certainty that Ewa stole motherhood from her in some simple, clean way. That is what makes the episode unsettling. No one here is innocent, but no one is entirely wrong either.

Kieślowski turns the commandment inside out. Stealing is not just about property. It can also mean taking someone’s place, their language for reality or the right to name what is theirs.