Kieślowski creates a brief, 30-second gap in the class scene at the 13th minute of Dekalog 8, which can be described as a kind of film rupture or film crack. Through this gap, an unexpected person enters the classroom, confronting us with a shocking representation of all the others in the world. This essay will attempt to explore this 30 seconds and what lies beyond it.
In this representation seen at the 13th minute of Dekalog 8, a person in their twenties, who is almost unrecognizable due to severe wear and tear, difficulty speaking and standing, with hair shaved carelessly from the roots, carrying an emblem resembling those worn in Jewish concentration camps right over their heart, appears. This person’s perception of the outside world seems weak, as if covered by a kind of dust or veil. This person immediately evokes the main character Tomek from Dekalog 6. We had seen Tomek's story end ambiguously, with his suicide and subsequent recovery from trauma. This nameless person entering the classroom and shocking us can be identified as Tomek in the context of Dekalog 8 as well.
Tomek appears in the classroom scene of Dekalog 8 with a shocking effect, remaining in the scene for about 30 seconds without doing anything, then exits, yet remains ingrained in our memory. Tomek appears in the moral-themed class scene, at a moment when the class is discussing the idea that "nothing is more important than a child’s life," suddenly entering through the door. By entering without permission at the 13th minute of Dekalog 8, Tomek causes a re-evaluation and re-production of everything established in this film and its meanings. When Tomek appears in the classroom, Zofia looks at the camera lens (the creator) anxiously, as if caught in the act, and we understand that she knows who Tomek is or what he represents. At that moment, we get the idea that she is aware of the ongoing hell in the classroom with this look, which is the most competent gaze in the room, but she shows no awareness of the Tomek who has entered the classroom as a representation of the Jewish child in foster care. When Zofia walks towards Tomek to remove him from the class, we see that her bag falls from the desk to the floor. This small detail is one of the crucial elements of the ongoing metaphorical narratives. Through these small details, the director transforms the classroom and everything in it into a representation of the European intellectual world in Dekalog 8, making us witness the shocking collapse of everything good or right there.
Frequent in Kieślowski's films, inter-film or parallel life intersections, and similar brief crossings, are among the most important building blocks of his cinema. With his unique cinematic language, which makes it possible to view and see from different perspectives through these thirty-second scenes and other similar brief scenes, these details stand at the core of his cinema. The person who shocks us by entering the classroom and staying there for about thirty seconds as an implicit, intense representation of other times, if removed from Dekalog 8, would result in Kieślowski's cinema being severed from its essence. Understanding what happens in the Decalogs or analyzing Kieślowski’s cinema depends on these scenes and similar ones.
Now, let’s take a closer look at what happens during this thirty-second scene in Dekalog 8 and its background. The main character Zofia in Dekalog 8 is a professor teaching ethics at a university. During the Holocaust in Poland, Zofia played an active role in the struggle. One day, she makes a terrible mistake that affects her entire life. She and her family decide to become foster parents for a 6-year-old girl to save her from the Gestapo, with the condition that the little Jewish girl convert to Christianity. When the child they intended to foster is brought to their home, they change their minds at the last minute with her husband, knowing that they have sent the Jewish child to her death. They have reasons for this, but ultimately, they did not prioritize the survival of a child above all else. The child is adopted by the intermediary family who brought her to Zofia’s house, and thus she survives and is Elzbieta, who has come from America to Poland to attend Zofia’s class. We first see her at the beginning of Dekalog 8 in 1943, walking anxiously through dark streets with a man holding her small hand, trying to reach Zofia’s house. After this scene where little Elzbieta appears, we see Zofia’s ordinary life years after the war. Among these glimpses are the crooked wall painting of a landscape that returns to being crooked after being corrected, the non-working gas stove, and Zofia’s struggling old car, which, while informing us that things will go awry in Dekalog 8, also tells us something about Zofia’s connection to the past because they were parts of life during the Holocaust.
In the present time, Zofia and Elzbieta are in the classroom, and in this classroom scene arranged by Kieślowski, they are confronting the past and the realities. Before Tomek enters the classroom, Kieślowski’s camera shows the classroom panoramically, moving to the left side of the room to show us an empty desk. The camera then returns to dialogue but moves again to the left side of the classroom, where we see the mysterious character appearing before the most critical scenes in all the Decalogues sitting at the empty desk, briefly looking into the camera lens. Additionally, this character, seen as emerging from nothing, is described differently due to situations seen in other Decalogs. As the camera returns to dialogue and shows the most important sentences of Elzbieta’s ongoing speech, a door slam draws everyone’s attention to the door, and we see Tomek entering the classroom. Our encounter with the terrifying Tomek and the classroom’s reaction redefines everything seen in the film up to that moment; we face the insidious face of fascism once again through the gap that forms in the film. In the classroom, among two students sitting side by side, one American with a white t-shirt saying “New York” and the other a black American with a white bow tie, the black one yells at Tomek to get out. The fact that a black student is given the role to shout “get out or leave” in English in a class speaking Polish, and that none of the people, including Professor Zofia and Elzbieta, react to this, is a crucial detail of the scene. As Professor Zofia walks towards Tomek to remove him from the class, her own bag falls from the desk to the floor. At that moment, the professor’s old, worn-out bag, most likely a relic from the Holocaust era when she sent a helpless 6-year-old child to death, symbolizes the deteriorating corners of the civilization she represents and its intellectual world. Like Zofia cannot escape her wound, she may not have escaped from that old bag, which is also a symbol of her wound. At that moment, Elzbieta, who is present in the classroom and has a fateful connection with Tomek, does not even notice Tomek. The black student shouts “get out,” and Zofia removes Tomek from the class.
In the following scene, we see Professor Zofia in her office. She rests her head on her elbow, lost in dark thoughts, and her watch is prominently visible on her wrist. This watch shows us that some wounds never heal over time. Zofia leaves her office, and as we hear the sound of her steps in the corridor, we are immediately reminded of the scene at the beginning of the film where the sound of the man’s steps holding the 6-year-old child echoed in our ears. The sound of the steps from 1943 is very similar to the sound of Zofia’s steps in the present time as they reach Elzbieta waiting in the corridor.
A ghost is roaming the world: the ghost of Tomek!
As this ghost enters the classroom, Zofia and Elzbieta, who cannot see him, continue to search for him at the site of the crime in 1943, losing their way once again. I look at all the collapsed classrooms in the world and all the Tomes of the world in countless identities roaming those classrooms. How many Tomeks are there, where in the world are they resisting, and what kinds of identities are they? It is impossible to know.
One of them is a Kurdish artist in 2012, lynched by a part of Turkey’s cultural and artistic environment. The crime scene is a gallery, and in this gallery, unlike Zofia, Elzbieta, and students, many people from Turkey's art scene watch without doing anything, just like in the classroom scene of Dekalog 8. The Kurdish artist is beaten by some members of the crowd incited by the owner of the gallery, which includes painters, sculptors, writers, photographers, and similar art environment members. This specific covert Kurdish hatred, covert fascism, and covert racism have wrapped around the control tower of the art environment like a spider, destroying the moral structure of the crowd under its guidance. Unlike the classroom in Poland, where they failed to recognize Tomek, they are fully aware of everything. Among them is a photographer, whom I trust most and believe has no tolerance for injustice. As the “Lynching” attempt unfolds step by step, unfortunately, this time the photographer replaces the black figure who expelled Tomek from the classroom in Dekalog 8. The film cracks once again, and when someone standing to the right of the photographer moves forward to stop the attack, the photographer silently pulls their hand back. The photographer’s right hand appears on stage for only four or five seconds, a duration similar to the exposure time of a camera’s aperture, and at that moment, everything in the gallery collapses completely, just like
The control tower with a crow as its guide can no longer chart a course for the future. They have long accepted that history has ended and their gods are long dead. Nothing is visible through their viewfinders anymore. The codes for the future are not in Zofia’s bag. The codes for the future are in the bag that Tomek clutches tightly in his lap, and we Kurds, like all the world's others, know very well what is in that bag.
— Nurettin Erkan GAZETE DUVAR Madison, Wisconsin, October 23, Friday 2020, USA
