Zach Ferguson - Decalogue 


In the two Decalogue films we watched, the concept of Midrash appeared multiple times throughout the films. Midrash is a deep connection and reflection of God's word in the Jewish belief seen in their Holy book, the Torah. The two films we watched focused on two of the ten commandments God gave to the world; thou shall not kill and thou shall have no other gods before me. 

In the first film, the commandment focused on was thou shall not kill. It focuses on a young man who is seen as being a very unpleasant person. He eventually leads a taxi driver outside the city and kills him. Several times throughout this film though is another man who appears at random points only to find out he resembles the angel of death. I think this is shown most clearly when the main character is being led to his execution and the man who is supposed to represent the angel of death walks by with a ladder and stops to look at the main character. This resembles the angel is ready to take the main character up to Heaven when that time comes very shortly. Then once the main character is dead that man is no longer seen again. It is almost like he was there as a warning or foreshadowing what was to come if the main character stayed on his current path.  

The angel of death was also resembled in the second film that focused on the commandment thou shall put no other gods before me. The father in this film was very passionate about his work with technology and calculations and almost worships it. His son also loves his fathers work and is constantly talking to his father about it. The angel of death is seen several times sitting by a fire near a frozen lake seeming as a warning not to get on the ice no matter what his calculations say. The father ignores this every time. Where this commandment comes up is where the son asks his father to go skating and once the father is done making calculations that the ice is thick enough he allows his son to go, only to find out later the son falls through the ice and drowns. Once the father hears and goes to the lake both his son and the man by the fire are gone resembling him taking the son to Heaven. Since the father put his technology above God, it caused him to lose his son because of his idolization of his own technology.  Both of these films do a fantastic job of displaying the commandments and the consequences of breaking those commandments while not believing in God or ignoring him. 


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