was when I was still in college, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and there were only VCDs in video stores. During a winter vacation, I went to borrow a CD and saw a brief introduction, which was the first episode of the Ten Commandments. How did this rational thinking father accurately calculate the thickness of the ice layer on the lake and its pressure resistance. Then, as if in a malicious joke from God, the ice shattered.
This is a story similar to the Seven Deadly Sins, which makes us feel that no matter how busy the bustling world is and how arrogant people are, God always seems to be smiling coldly in a corner. God, on the one hand, is a benevolent and almighty God, and on the other hand, a father who pays attention to money. He doesn't allow us to do whatever we want.
Almost all films in the cold European region have similar characteristics: the pictures are cold, the colors are bluish, the characters' emotions are not too exposed, and they are icy and snowy. The accent is also blunt, and the distance between people is maintained at a very cold and polite distance.
In this film, the innocence of children is also extraordinarily rational. He will use the computer to control the electrical appliances in the home, which is almost the same as the current airplay. I also use a computer to check my mother's status, like an acting god, who can check the world through a remote program.
The relationship between a child and his father is like this. He has complete trust in his father, which comes from good communication on the one hand and from the worship of his father's ability on the other. Fathers are like representatives of scientists who have become more and more capable since the Age of Enlightenment. They are calm, rational, and unsentimental; they have absolute confidence in controlling the world, although they are not aggressive. The children gained the confidence to face the world and irrational emotional support from their father.
However, the director wants to reveal the tenderness that we have always trusted blindly. Faith in God is faith, and faith in science, in this film, is faith. If the father believes that the ice will not break, it is because he believes in the computer; why does he believe in the computer, because he believes that the computer cannot make mistakes; why does he believe that the computer cannot make mistakes? Because the computer processes the data objectively and according to the program; why can't the data be wrong? Why can't the people who collect the data be wrong? Why can't the person who designs the program be wrong... For the time being, let's not think about it, people always have to believe in something. These rootless beliefs are beliefs.
Knowing that the child died, his father's legs instantly softened. At that moment, he could only pray to God. Maybe it's repentance, maybe it's dazed, maybe it just needs a space to face my loss of belief.
By the way, the movie I borrowed when I was in college was not the one by Kieslowski, but the one by Demir. It was 220 minutes long, and the more I watched it, the more wrong it became. It was a magical experience.
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