Catholic Culture Resources
Catholic Culture Resources

The Abdication of Fatherhood—Dekalog: Four (1988)

By Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 01, 2020 | In Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast

Listen to this podcast on: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS feed | YouTube Channel

This is a listener-supported podcast! Thanks for your help!

Krzysztof KieÅ›lowski’s DEKALOG (1988) is a series of 10 short films inspired by the Ten Commandments. With this episode we discuss the fourth film in the series, which deals with the fourth commandment: “Honor thy father and mother.”

In this fraught installment, a father is challenged to definitively embrace his paternal role as authority and protector, lest his already ambiguous relationship with daughter be perverted into something truly monstrous.

Dekalog can be difficult to find. It can be streamed online with a (relatively cheap and surprisingly legal) subscription to https://easterneuropeanmovies.com—the best viewing experience, however, will be the recent restored edition on Blu-Ray/DVD from Criterion https://www.criterion.com/films/28661-dekalog

Older editions on Blu-Ray and DVD are available for considerably cheaper on Amazon and elsewhere, and you may have luck borrowing Dekalog from your local library.

Next up on Criteria: Fritz Lang’s science fiction classic Metropolis (1927), found easily on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvtWDIZtrAE

Links

Donate at http://www.catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Join our Facebook group if you wish to discuss these films with us! http://www.facebook.com/groups/CatholicPods

Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com/

Criteria is hosted by Thomas V. Mirus and James T. Majewski.

Thomas is Director of Podcasts for CatholicCulture.org and hosts the Catholic Culture Podcast. See full bio.

James is the Director of Customer Relations for CatholicCulture.org as well as the host and narrator for Catholic Culture Audiobooks. See full bio.

Sound Off! CatholicCulture.org supporters weigh in.

All comments are moderated. To lighten our editing burden, only current donors are allowed to Sound Off. If you are a current donor, log in to see the comment form; otherwise please support our work, and Sound Off!

There are no comments yet for this item.