On the death
of their father, with whom they had little connection, two brothers discover to
their amazement the immense value of the stamp collection that this philatelist
had built up during his life. Neither Jerzy (Jerzy Stuhr), bourgeois conformist
and homebody, nor Artur (Zbigniew Zamachowski), cardboard rebel of the group
“City Death”, know how to respect this objective capital, which they secure but
lose, without having spent a cent, by suffering a scam costing, moreover, a
kidney to the first. This latest episode offers a welcome break in tone,
tending towards a fierce satire of the greed for profit that will characterize
the eastern countries after the fall of the Wall. However, it is not in the
picaresque farce that Kieślowski is most comfortable, as the semi-success of his
film “Three Colors: White” will demonstrate, sharing a combative tone with the
finale of his human tragicomedy.
It is still
about integrity. Respect the passion of a deceased or convert its fruit into a
sum? One then went so far as to give up part of his body for money. The
parallel montage between Jerzy's operation and the burglary of their safe,
juxtaposing organic imagery and symbolic value (the stamp, like the note, owes
its value to that which a community attributes to it) recalls the design of
Locke that ownership begins with that of one's own body. The characters
literally get corrupted to the core. This corruption touches even the
counter-culture, accused through and through of hypocrisy (the caricature of
the underground of the countries of the former Bloc is not carried out
lightly). Idolatry is a shared fault, from the collector's obsession to the
attitude of a groupie nurse, excited as much as inhibited at the thought of a
hand touching the face of a beloved singer. In the end, however, the passionate
idolater seems the most honest character, the one for whom money did not
matter. The newspaper clippings he kept about one of his sons guard against the
doubt that he had absolutely no interest in his offspring. He's the only one here
who loves something for itself, not for its exchange value.
This last
episode denounces an economy reduced to barter, where everything can be
exchanged (the value of stamps is not indicated in zlotys by the expert but
according to the goods they would allow to acquire), to the detriment of
dignity. living people, respect for the memory of the dead. A climate in which
the most devious will have no difficulty in gaining the upper hand over the
less informed (the hound behind the window of a sinister dealer gives the keys
to how his interlocutors will find themselves rolled by him in the flour). The
conclusion of the Decalogue prophesies a decade of unprecedented corruption
that Kieślowski will live abroad before his death, resulting for the
post-communists in a right of the strongest, a blank check to shameless
exploitation. Corruption gangrene, in its terminal phase for the two
dispossessed, the fraternal bond, shaken by suspicion. The film ends on an
ironically optimistic note, however. Jerzy and Artur reconcile, united in their
frustration, mournful hilarity at the mockery of their futile adventure. Almost
everything having escaped them, they have not lost each other.
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