Decision and Religion: How Choice Demonstrates Character’s Intent and a Director’s Greater Message

A Paper by M. Rinn

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In film, the concept of choice is always at the heart of a character. It is what they decide to do, or not do, that creates the film and helps to keep the plot and story moving forward. These decisions demonstrate insight into the character’s psychology as well. When coupled with films relating to religion, it gives insight not only into the character’s concept of religion, but the director’s as well. In Decalogue 1 (Kieslowski 1988), Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami 1997), After Life (Kore-eda 1998), and The Seventh Seal (Bergman 1957), and demonstrate this dualism and how decisions reflect greater points about religion.

Decalogue 1 was filmed in Poland, while it was still under communist control and is part of a larger series that explores all of the Ten Commandments in a modern context. The first part of the series focuses on the passage “You shall have no Gods before me,” focusing on modern science in order to do so. This first hour of the series relates the story of an unnamed professor (Henryk Baranowski) and his son, Pavel. In order to determine if the ice on the lake outside of their blok is safe enough to skate on, they conduct an experiment by freezing milk and entering data into a computer, reaching the conclusion that it is perfectly safe in order to do so. When Pavel goes out, the careful calculations are proven wrong and he falls through the ice into freezing cold water. His body is not found until hour later. His death makes his father challenge the supremacy of science and technology, which he and his son put before all other things in the film, including God. When Pavel’s father goes into a church after his son’s death, home to a famous sixth century Byzantine icon, it seems as if he is going to reconcile and place God first. The lighting in the church is dark and empty, giving a sense of the character’s emotions and how alone he feels after the death of Pavel. However, the reconciliation does not occur. Instead of choosing to return to the church, he kicks over the altar, spilling candles and candle wax everywhere. The camera then focuses on the eye of the Madonna and child over the altar. Lighting on the icon is ambiguous, making it seem as if there is wax on the icon, or if the Madonna is crying because of what has happened and because of the rejection of God.

Through the decision of kicking over the altar and not reconciling with God, the character of Pavel’s father as well as Kieslowski’s messages are clear. For Pavel’s father, there is absolutely no way that what happened could be an act of God. Going into the church and disrespecting it so by kicking one of the most sacred spaces in the building reaffirms the rejection, as well as his world view where only science and reason reign supreme. It seems that by including this scene, Kieslowski is making a larger point about the relationship between God and science. Those who put science first, blocking out God entirely in the form of agnosticism or atheism will not attribute these sorts of acts to divine intervention. While these agnostics or atheists may see the irony in what happens and may be saddened by the results, it will still remain and act of chance rather than an act of God. In Jessie Labov’s essay on the film, she takes a look at the aspect of politics and solidarity in the film. She states that “The contrast between the two modes of storytelling is what allows the view to recognize the ever day life of the block…while deliberating over an end-game of moral reasoning” (Labov 131). In addition to using the character of Pavel’s father in order to make a point about atheistic views of random accidents, Kieslowski is making a larger point about the Ten Commandments in general. He wants the viewer to sit and consider each commandment as it relates to their life by creating ten scenarios that violate the commandments. It is an uncomfortable questioning, but one that he seems to think is tantamount in a changing world.

Taste of Cherry presents a different view of not only religion, but of religious experiences. In the film, the main character, Mr Badii (Homayon Ershadi), drives around the outskirts of Tehran in search for someone who will bury his body after he commits suicide. He takes three people for a ride in his car to talk about the task, and is only told yes by the last passenger, a taxidermist named Mr. Bagheri (Abdolrahman Bagheri). Bagheri prods at Badii during their car ride, trying to determine what has driven Mr. Badii to the point of suicide. In an attempt to open up, he relates the story of his own attempted suicide, which was stopped when he had a seemingly religious moment of eating mulberries right before hanging himself, realising that what he is about to do is not worth it. The two then stop to drop Bagheri off at work, and then Mr. Badii drives off again. During this sequence, Mr. Badii is shown contemplating Mr. Bagheri’s words. In the blink of an eye the seemingly idyllic pace of Badii’s driving throughout the film speeds up and he rushes back to the university where he had dropped off Mr. Bagheri and goes to talk to him again.

The scene where Mr. Badii’s driving speeds up suggests that there has been a change of thought in the character’s choice to kill himself. Earlier, when Mr. Bagheri described his experience with mulberries, there was a great religious aspect to it, emphasizing a reawakening and new zeal for life that Bagheri has thought he had lost. In fact, Kiarostami says rather directly that the importance of the mulberries to the Bagheri’s life is because “This man could not have enjoyed that fruit so much if it wasn't for the despair connected with the experience… This is not connected to culture, this is a universal phenomenon” (The Iranian Interview). Badii’s contemplating and decision to chase after Mr. Bagheri shows that a key aspect of his character is questioning his own decision, not based on a specific religious prohibition against suicide, but rather on the perspective of someone else and a religious experience. Through this change in thought, Kiarostami implies that religion itself should not be what one relies on to prevent suicide or bad actions. Rather, finding God and the goodness of the world through experience is what should be the compelling factor.

Kore-Eda’s After Life is a film focused entirely on decision making. The film’s basic premise is that after one dies, there is a one week intermediate period where the deceased are asked by caseworkers to pick out the most important or significant memory of their life. That memory will be recreated on film, and then at the end of the week they will be shown the footage. After they see that footage, they will pass into Heaven or Hell or whatever happens next, with their only memory being the one that has been recreated for them. It is when the filming of these memories begins that the importance of decision making, and moreover the emotions that it brings, begins to shine through. The scene is comprised of three or four scenes being created, each with the decision makers reacting in different ways. A middle aged man, whose memory was that of riding the bus as a small child, is shown smiling and lost in thought, clearly happy. An older woman, who chose dancing as a small child, is delighted, but also lost in her own memory as she struggles to remember the details of her memory and a younger business man who chose riding a plane, is flabbergasted at how well his memory is being recreated and then too lost in his memory. The cutting of the scene as well as the cheerful lighting demonstrates the happiness and positive emotion connected to the recreation of important memories for these characters and how the emotions will carry over into the afterlife.

Kore-Eda’s concept of the afterlife makes a poignant statement about Heaven and Hell. By having various characters, from all different walks of life, decide on their most significant memory from their entire life and carry it on, it is demonstrated what is most important to them. Having elaborate back stories and long introductions to them is unneeded. Everything that needs to be said about them is summed up in the one scene where they film the memories and the characters are seen smiling and remembering the experience fondly. In addition, it allows Kore-Eda to suggest that what is important is life, not what happens in the after life. By having one memory to dwell on, the after life becomes almost irrelevant. Reliving that important moment is key. It is very similar to Proust’s Remembrance of Thing Past: Swann’s Way when Proust discusses the process of memory and the attempt to recall experience. He says that memory is not so much seeking, rather, it is creating, and coming “face to face with something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day” (Proust 63). Both Kore-Eda and Proust focus on the recreation of memory as not reliving the moment exactly, but instead, it is something that must be created differently every time. There is no doubt that the case workers in the film have created the same scenes time and again, but because of the difference in people and because of the emotions associated with what occurs, there will always be subtle variation. It is the process of recreation combined with the recalling of experience that makes a memory a memory.

Bergman’s The Seventh Seal focuses on medieval Europe, looking at decision making through an existential view point. According to existential philosophy, life has no meaning, but a person must carve out a personal meaning to life in order to continue living. This need to make decisions that define one’s existence is crystallized in the character of Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), the knight playing chess against Death (Bengt Ekerot). The film opens with creepy choral music, and then shows Block and his squire, Jons (Gunnar Björnstrand) awash on a rocky beach. From nowhere, Death appears, informing Block that it is his time to go. Block initially agrees, but then decides that he will challenge Death to a game of chess. As long as the game is ongoing, Block stays alive. The decision not to submit to Death causes the rest of the film to follow Block’s quest for religious meaning in his life. He looks in various places, from the church to a witch girl and then in nature itself, trying to reconcile everything that he has seen from the crusades as well as the plague ravaging Europe in order to try and find God and religion.

By having Block decide to play chess, Bergman creates an elegant exercise in existential thought. The decision demonstrates the fact that although Block claims that he is ready to die, he is not and still wants to figure out what life means to him. Block comes off as a very jaded character, a person who has seen a great number of disturbing and horrifying things and is still in the process of coping with it. As he lives in the medieval period, religion colours his world perspective and he is attempting to understand how God could allow for things like the plague and the violence of the crusades to happen. He is still searching for meaning, and delaying his death demonstrates this. This also allows Bergman to commentate on religion using existential philosophy. Through Block’s decision, Bergman suggests that one is never ready for death until they have figured out what life means to them on a personal level. Moreover, he suggests that religion does not have to be a part of it. Block’s quest to justify what has happened through connecting God to events proves fruitless at the end of the film when Death comes and collects Block, his wife and several others. Bergman himself admits that the film is about humanity and it’s relation to religion, saying that in the film he “placed [his] two opposing beliefs side by side, allowing each to state its own case in its own way” (Bergman 235). If this is the case, then Block can be seen as an avatar for Bergman himself, who infuses his own need to define the meaning of life into that of Block, thus using the film to explore religious and nonreligious understandings of life.

Choice is the defining part of any person, whether they are in a movie or living in the real world. However, in movies, the decisions characters make at key points in their lives reflect a greater message that the director tries to project at the viewer. When religion is involved, the statement is the director’s way of probing at religion and religious understandings. These questions make the audience think about social taboos, how God plays into their lives, what is important to them and why. In the end, it is these sorts of questions that help to define great films, and what makes them so important.