The most haunting image of Dekalog one is the line “I am ready _” made complete with the blinking cursor. Who is ready? I am sure that Kieslowski has discussed this ending in an interview with someone, but before I venture to explore that, I want to express a possibility, something that he may be suggesting … an idea that carries over to his next films, but also touches my inner drives.

I would like to suggest that Pawel is speaking back to his father through this computer text. And to the question of whether Pawel is actually haunting the computer or is Kryzsztof just imagining it, I would ask back: does it matter?

Think of how Kryzsztof will mourn the loss of his son. The movie suggests some connection to direct, institutional spirituality and a rejection of this false god of technology. But Kieslowski is never one to grasp onto such black and white answers or human responses. Even the characters with the most faith in his series reach that point through their own understanding and definition of God.

So I would like to think that the father will respond to that “I am ready _” declaration not by tossing the computer in the garbage or spending less time with the computer. I think he will lean into it and speak to the machine as if his son had haunted it.

In doing so, perhaps he ends up writing and disclosing more via this one-way conversation than he ever could with his son face to face. This is the beauty of writing, it frees us to have the wanted conversations instead of the real ones. No longer required to serve as father and protector for Pawel, Kryzsztof could be freed to discuss his genuine hopes and dreams. And Pawel, especially with the technology of the 80s, would likely respond back with very little, just simple stock phrases indicating that he read and received the message, or perhaps did not understand.

But this too is good, because the father would now project the answers onto the text that he wrote and would alter his messages based on them, creating an image in his mind of an ever-curious child wishing to understand his father and his loss. All of this would help Kryzsztof grieve because it would allow him to act as if Pawel had never gone, as if he had permanent access to him.

And in a very strange way — perhaps the strangest phenomenon in all of life — he would feel a bit of apprehension with coming into contact with real world reminders of his son or things that contradicted the mental image of this internal drama “they” had co-created. Grief turns Kryzszstof into an artist. And he grows to love his creation, but also believe that it is not really his. It belongs a little to him, a little to Pawel and a little to whatever force in the universe inspired him to re-father the lost child.

And this is how Kryzsztof finds God.