Dan Conley’s Writing Projects

There are certain things in life that are difficult to talk or write about, even when they are impersonal. I took a break from The Dekalog for the last several days because the scenes of grief in this episode are difficult to hold at a distance, especially because the main

The Dekalog was created for Polish television and for many years, it could only been viewed in the low resolution 480i standard for global broadcasting. Criterion’s BluRay was remastered from Kieslowski’s original film, so it looks far more beautiful today than it did in its day. There were

The bulk of this segment is taken up by a group chess match in which Krzysztof and Pawel participate. A young woman is playing about a dozen players at a time, Pawel declares at one point that she has already defeated six. They are seated in a circle, the young

The first half of this segment takes place in a university lecture hall. Krzysztof is a professor of linguistics, which I would not have guessed — I assumed he would be a math professor. But there is a computational element to this lecture, it just takes a few minutes to get

It seems hard to believe now, but most of the things we take for granted in our technology were envisioned long before they became practical. For example, Pawel shows his aunt tricks that his computer can do. He’s rigged up his system to control all of his house’s

The characters in “The Dekalog” have unique perspectives on religious faith. Believers tend to be non-dogmatic and disbelievers speak the language of doubt, not certainty.