This ambitious television series challenges the modern human’s relationship with the fundamental pillar of Christianity, the Ten Commandments. Independent segments exploring morality expand to their full extent on the big screen. The opening, built on the counterbalance of science and mysticism, reaches out to contemplate humanity when faith in God is replaced by faith in knowledge.
A father and son live together, with a computer as the third family member. The mother is far away, in a different time zone. Yet the computer can calculate, open and close the door and the faucet, alongside telling what the mother is doing now. Does it perhaps also know what dreams she is having? The son sees a dead dog. What is death? Is the dog better off now?
The aunt is the father’s sister but different from the father. The father does not need God because he believes that everything can be measured and weighed. The aunt says that God exists, of course, even for the father, because God is love. Does the father deny love? The father contemplates, while lecturing his students, how one might learn to understand all levels of a foreign language, metasemantics, metaphysics. Where does the spirit of language come from? Could a computer replace a human, performing tasks beyond human capability? Translate poetry? The computer is ready. Ink spreads on the paper. Where is the son? It’s as if Nicolas Roeg’s horror classic Don’t Look Now (1973), based on Daphne du Maurier’s story, is haunting in the background.
Short film Olipa kerran talvi – ja lunta will be screened before Decalogue I by Krzysztof Kieślowski
Mia Öhman