Poland abortion ban and Krzysztof Keslowski’s Decalogue
The ban on abortion in Poland under the pressure of local archaic mysticism came as a surprise to many, but it was possible to understand how much Catholicism distorts the cognitive space in this country while watching Krzysztof Keslowski’s Decalogue, filmed 31 years ago and based on the Ten Commandments.
The first Commandment, on which the first series is built, are as follows:
I am the Lord thy God… thou shalt not have other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.
According to the plot of the first series, father Krzysztof and his seven-year-old son Paweł are fond of computer programming. Using one of the programs, they calculated the strength of the ice on a lake near their house in a sleeping district of Warsaw to make sure it was thick enough to skate. The computer replied that the thickness was sufficient. The next day Paweł goes skating and falls under the ice. The father does not believe until the last minute that this happened, because the computer gave the exact answer without a doubt. However, when Paweł’s body is pulled out from under the ice, Krzysztof sees that all the interesting residents of the area, who have gathered to see this spectacle, get on their knees and start praying. Krzysztof alone is not on his knees.
In the evening, he goes to a Catholic church (The Church Wniebowstąpienia Pańskiego (Ascension of the Lord), almost completed in this sleeping district for locals who have decided that Christianity will satisfy their spiritual needs better than communism. Krzysztof sees the stern gaze of the Virgin Mary in the church and, enraged by her interference in the reality modeled on a computer, collapses the stand with candles in front of her.
The Virgin Mary cries because she feels sorry for everyone: both the deceased Paweł and Krzysztof, who does not understand that computers count worse than the Lord God, and instead of counting, they just had to pray.
