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Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

"Simuland" him/herself bears false witness by spreading ignorance!: "What Polish underground? That must have been a really exclusive minority. There was no organized effort by any Polish underground to save Jews; whatever Jews happened to be rescued were done so by individuals acting on their own. To claim otherwise, as K. does, is to lie." FACT: Poland had the largest--and longest lived--underground in Europe during WWII! It gave France & Britain a copy of the Germans' enigma coding machine, & helped to crack the code. FACT: Future Georgetown University Jan Karski escaped to England to inform a doubting West of the Holocaust(including meetings with British foreign secretary Anthony Eden and President Franklin D. Roosevelt). FACT: Zegota (the Council to Aid Jews)was a branch of the Polish underground established to rescue Jews from the Nazis.Its express purpose was to aid the country's Jews and find places of safety for them in occupied Poland. Poland was the only country in occupied Europe with such a dedicated secret organization.Simuland then continues to spew his bigotry: "Widespread deep-seated Polish anti-Semitism both predated and survived the Nazi invasion; Poles killed Jews even after the Nazi's retreated. To this day they make life insufferable for the scarce Jews who remain in their country. (I have this directly from a Jewish colleague who grew up in and fled modern Communist Poland.)" There was strong animosity on both sides toward each other. This came from centuries of antagonistic living in close quarters (predicated by Poland's unprecedented religious tolerance--which is why 90% of European Jews lived autonomously in pre-partitioned Poland). While some Poles did kill Jews, it is likewise true that some Jews killed Poles. To blame the entire populations for the actions of the few, would be like blaming all Americans for the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. Many Jews were communists (the 1st. head of the party in post-war Poland, for example), and helped the Soviets to select & deport 2 million Poles to Siberia after Stalin invaded & divided the country with his ally, Hitler, in 1939 (within a year, 1 million of these Poles were dead). The "pogrom" he alludes was political. In the Cold War, Moscow backed the Arabs against the U.S. backed Israel. It directed the Polish Communist Party to rid itself of its Jewish faction. The non-Jewish & Jewish factions of the party were bitter rivals.

Dekalog 8: "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness" is a short film which will surely move any human being with heart to tears.By making this film,one of the greatest masters of Polish cinema Kieslowski has given birth to a highly mature work of art which needs to be seen at regular intervals to fathom the true meaning of human existence found in human heart.One can learn that there is no yardstick by which greatness or wickedness of an individual,a society,a nation or a religion can be measured.Everybody has reasons to accept or decline a good action."Dekalog,Osiem" suggests that individual sense prevails sometimes over a good act.Rules have to be broken on some occasions to save precious,human lives.It is a human instinct that old memories cannot be separated from human soul.This is the reason why old memories induce people to visit places where they could have died,see a house where they were hidden,meet a person who saved a life.This short film is remarkable for its depiction of young Polish university students.It is a good sign that young generation have been shown as interested in tackling ethical and moral questions.It is hard to say whether Kieslowski had ideas about the liberation of communist Poland in his mind when he was making this film.

One of the most dynamically dramatic episodes of the Decalogue, this particular story also holds in its dialog the key to what drives a lot of the Decalogue segments along: the study of ethics and motivations. It starts out as a discussed reference to Decalogue 2, self-reflectively mocking the attempt to create ethical drama through cancer-patients, and then leads into a much more personal (is that even possible in this series?) look into the histories of the characters involved.The funny thing is that in this one, the drama has already past... which is necessary for connecting to it the idea of the law, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." How does one know how false witness affects negatively the life-station of the people involved could not really be considered so soon after the fact, but instead needs a lifetime of confusion and personal guilt to show an aged person already suffering her own personal hell.What's most interesting about this one is the irony, especially of an ethics professor claiming that the key to moral absolution comes through the survival of the innocent... and yet it is the survival of a young woman who creates her strongest moral dilemma. That is why this episode is the most self-reflexive, because it cannot of itself willingly claim an absolute understanding of events and moral dilemma.--PolarisDiB

With a minimum of histrionics, this film tells a simple story about the legacy of the holocaust in Poland.A college professor who once turned away a little Jewish girl who sought refuge is confronted by that same girl -- now in her forties -- and must explain to her the real reason for turning her away. While the two women are able to forge a deep friendship, the man (a tailor) who risked his life to try and save the girl has become, with time, too closed off to allow her to form any sort of bond with him. The film's last image, of the lonely tailor looking out the window of his shop to see the professor and her friend laughing together, has the same straight forward and unassuming emotional wallop that ends many of Kieslowski's films.This may be the best fictional film ever made about the holocaust.