The Decalogue-Melissa Faller

The Decalogue is a series of ten short films. Each individual film is dedicated to one of the Ten Commandments. The film we watched in class was short film eight, which was “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” The plot of the film was a Holocaust survivor looking for the women who could not take her in during the War. The woman at the time did not take the holocaust child in because she had overheard that the child was a spy for the Germans. She could not risk giving herself up if the child did turn out to be a spy. In the end the child was placed with a different family and made it out alive. The child comes back looking for the woman who did not keep her. During the movie we get a sense that the woman feet guilty about not being able to keep the child. She is overly enthusiastic about keeping the woman at her house now in order to remove the guilt that she had for leaving her to dye in the holocaust. I think the filmmakers did a great job portraying the Ten Commandment; thou shall not bear false witness. Although not bearing false witness seems easy enough, the movie shows that even good people put in difficult have a hard time following the Ten Commandments. With this note I feel that it gives a more realistic appeal to Christianity. Many people perceive Christians as people who do not make mistakes, but in fact Christians are just people trying to represent Christ. They however, are not Christ. I feel that this concept and idea is important to portray in the movies, because recently many stereotypes of Christianity are you have to be perfect. It is almost a breath of fresh air to see someone on film claiming to be Christian and messing up.