The one risk of doing at scene-by-scene analysis of the Dekalog is that it can distract from the atmospheric power of the series. There are elements of Kieslowski’s masterpiece that have nothing to do with individual camera shots or even the stories being told. After awhile, just hearing the Dekalog theme evokes something — a common experience with episodic TV. The opening credits to The Sopranos and Twin Peaks have a similar effect on me, I know what I’m about to experience based purely on the mood set by the opening music.

But there’s something else in the Dekalog that can’t be captured one bite at a time. Kieslowski is unusually willing to take viewers into uncomfortable spots. If you focus too strongly on the individual moments, it’s possible to overanalyze the “ick” factor of any particular plot point. But if taken together, viewers begin to see and understand that this discomfort, and our increasing willingness to sit in it as the series rolls on, is crucial to Kieslowski’s method.

It’s similar to forming a close friendship. To enter a space of genuine trust, we have to be willing to expose our soft underbelly. There’s a feeling of discomfort that is essential to closeness, seeing another person let their guard down and admit something they normally conceal, even if the information takes some shine off their created self image. Over the course of ten episodes, we no longer see Kieslowski as just another virtuoso director. He feels like our cinematic friend. We trust him to take us on this journey without feeling exploited.

The brothers are now recovering from this terrible loss. They are trying to contextualize what they’ve just been through and to fit it into their moral universe. I believe that the final scenes of this show are not really about the brothers at all, they are about their father and the distance he created within in the family.

By making his life about these little pieces of printed paper and adhesive, the father built a mindset focused on acquisition, preservation and celebration of accomplishments. His relationships all took a back seat to objects. But now the stamps are gone, but his children remain. The dead father doesn’t feel the loss of the stamps, his children have to bear it.

So what do they do with this pain? They turn on each other. It is a sad reality of humanity that we often hurt the ones closest to us first. Repressive regimes always turn first to their own “enemies within” before taking on enemies abroad.

It begins with Jerzy. He calls the detective investigating the theft and meets him at a local cafe. He apologizes for the secrecy, the police officer assures him that discretion is expected in his profession. He then starts bringing up details about Artur that make him uneasy — was he really at the hospital (the detective assures him that he was — he even slept in the nurses quarter, which made me wonder if he had company there.) Then Jerzy switches and says maybe he had help, he’s around all those unsavory people after all (the musicians, I assume. I’ve been around a lot of musicians in my life and haven’t come across one who I’d suspect of being a thief, beyond maybe ripping off someone else’s melody.)

Since I’ve already gone into detail about the ways people use their hands in the Dekalog, I should point out that while Jerzy is telling all of this to the detective — and deflecting throughout by saying he expects he’ll consider him a bastard for selling out his own brother — Jerzy’s hands are fidgeting with a lit cigarette somehow clutched in them throughout.

The detective seems highly skeptical of Jerzy’s suspicions, but thanks him for them anyway. Before we have any time to feel sorry for Artur, we next see him at another eating establishment doing the exact same thing to Jerzy — raising suspicions with the detective in charge.

Artur doesn’t go into any details, he says it’s just an intuition and the detective encourages him to trust his intuition. We next see both brothers dealing with what they just did, they are distraught about it. But remember, they are simply playing out the script their father has written for them. The father sacrificed his family for stamps, they too are programmed for this.

But where does Jerzy’s wandering take him? Of all places, to a post office. There, he can be seen turning a carousel of stamps for sale. And as he circulates them, who should appear but an old friend from Dekalog 6. Yes, it is Tomek behind the counter, at a different post office than he worked before.

Every time I watch this episode, I have a hard to explain feeling of joy at seeing Tomek’s smiling face. The fact that a character who experienced trauma has now overcome it and is greeting another character in a moment of grief is very powerful. This is an important subtext of the Dekalog, that survival is often what matters most.

Tomek sells Jerzy three stamps — one commemorating “40 years of law enforcement,” another with a seal, and a third about some world wrestling competition. They are nothing terribly special, certainly not valuable at the time. I’m not a collector, but I’d like to like to get my hands on those three stamps simply in honor of this series.

Right before Jerzy leaves the post office, Artur passes by the same building. They do not see one another, but they are both in the vicinity when the stamp conspiracy is exposed. First, we see the “chairman” of the stamp organization with a big black dog, much like the brothers’ dog. We then see the young man who originally fenced the zeppelins stamps. And finally, we see the stamp broker with another big black dog. They meet in the square. We never hear what they have to say or how the dogs figure into the plot, but it doesn’t matter — we know that the brothers have been had from the start.

This takes us to the final scene of the Dekalog. Jerzy arrives back at his father’s apartment. The door is unlocked, he simply enters. The apartment is dark, except for one table, with a small lamp focused on Artur’s face — he’s hunched over some stamps.

After expressing that they didn’t expect one another there, the brothers admit that they had both pointed fingers at each other with the police. But then we have one last moment of great coincidence, after so many throughout the Dekalog.

Artur is at the table looking at three stamps. He said that he was in the post office, so he felt like buying them. Jerzy steps to the table and puts down his stamps — the three same ones. Jerzy says “a series!” The brothers, their heads now touching each other across the table, share a closing laugh as the series comes to an end. Kieslowski plays us out with the City Death punk song mocking the Ten Commandments from earlier in the episode.

In the end, the brothers don’t have their father’s collection nor the fortune, but they’ve found a way to reconcile and perhaps begin a new hobby together. Most of all, they have survived, and in Kieslowski’s moral universe, it is the best we can hope for human beings day after day.