Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Decalogue I
1989 · Krzysztof Kieślowski · Decalogue I on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch the computer switch itself on with no one touching it. (setting)
The screen lights up and displays I am ready unprompted, treated almost as an oracle in a household built around measurement and calculation.
Payoff: The machine seems to think on its own, which is why the household trusts it. In the reading: spiritual-automaton. Deleuze calls a machine that seems to think for us a spiritual automaton, and this computer is exactly that kind of unsettling.
Notice how often you look through glass or water. (camera)
Zdort fills the film with reflective and transparent surfaces, windows and glass, that promise a truth just out of reach.
Payoff: The images ask to be read rather than simply looked at. In the reading: the readable image (lectosign). Deleuze calls an image that has lost its obvious meaning and must be deciphered a lectosign, a readable image.
Notice the chilled blue and gray light over the estate. (light)
Zdort renders the Warsaw housing block in cold blues, grays, and milky winter white, a palette that matches the film's spiritual climate throughout.
Payoff: The cold in the image is doing the same work as the cold in the story.
Watch how still and contained the father stays. (performance)
Baranowski plays Krzysztof with a reserved, intellectual calm that holds steady scene after scene.
Payoff: The stillness shows you a man who trusts his own reasoning.
Listen for the computer's hum and the quiet. (sound)
Preisner's score is used sparingly, so ambient sound, the machine's hum, carries much of the film's mood.
Payoff: The quiet does more work than music would.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch what the film shows through glass, and watch how long it holds a still face.