Rating: 
Summary: Worth the experience, but...
Review: After watching all ten hours of The Decalogue (plus extras), I must say I wasn't all that impressed. It was worthwhile as the chance to see the early work of a director who later gained international repute, but not particularly entertaining or rewarding to actually view. The acting is terrific, some of the camera work and individual shots approach being memorable, and there were various interesting elements I'll discuss further in a moment. However, the picture quality is generally poor (understandable under the circumstances of creation), the subtitling is inconsistent, and the stories are all very gloomy and depressing except the tenth film. ("Decalogue Ten" was supposed to be "humorous" according to Kieslowski's comments in the brief "On The Set" featurette. I grinned once and never even chuckled at all. At least it wasn't so grim as the other nine tales.)As to the interesting aspects of these ten films, one is how the characters overlapped sometimes from film to film. and that's NOT including the "silent observer" who appears in each film, a linking element I found relatively pointless to the level of annoyance. Film critics apparently have a professional code that forces them to describe nearly every foreign film as a masterpiece. I'm not living under any such code, so I'm free to be honest and just say I didn't like The Decalogue all that much.
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