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 levers and nobs via radio control, so he can lock doors, turn on water faucets and more. We don’t really know if he did it himself or with his dad, but it’s extremely clever nonetheless, and anyone who has tried to sync Apple HomeKit devices properly will appreciate the reliability of these low tech devices.
William Gibson once wrote that all effective technologies are indistinguishable from magic. Pawel then shows off a program he created that translates a letter his mother sent him, telling him what she is doing at every moment in the day. The computer does the time translation for him, so he can ask at any time what she is doing and it answers, in English, what it is (in this case, she was asleep.) Perhaps the time difference and use of English is an indication that his mother lives in America. We do not know — the movie never tells us. His aunt asks if the computer can tell us what she dreams, but it replies “I do not know!”
His aunt then tells Pawel that he’s sure his mother dreams about him. He asks if she also dreams about his dad and the aunt replies “I don’t know.” Before they leave to take the bus to her house for dinner, Pawel looks longingly at his dad’s computer, the IBM, and says it’s too bad dad doesn’t allow him to use it, it must know what his mother is dreaming.
She’s a wonderful aunt — she agrees to race Pawel across the snowy grounds after getting off the bus. She serves him dumplings and soup, which sounds lovely to me right now on this weirdly cold Chicago May day. She takes out some photos she just had developed — they are of Pope John Paul II. And here I was just writing about the Chicago cold and we have the new pope while the movie brings up Poland’s pope — synchronicities abound. Pawel asks if he is kind and clever, and she nods yes. He then asks if he knows the meaning of life.
She answers “I think so.” Pawel mentions that his dad says we live, in part, to make life easier for the people who come after us, which is a very nice philosophy to hold, in my opinion, but he also adds that sometimes it doesn’t work out. His sister agrees and elaborates that if you can do things for other people, then you feel needed, and life becomes brighter. It is obvious that the siblings share a similar worldview, but she feel obliged to tell Pawel some ways that they are different.
She says that, at a very early age, his father discovered that just about everything can be measured. And he concluded that measurement could be applied to everything. She says his worldview is reasonable, but it doesn’t rule out God. She then hugs Pawel and expresses her idiosyncratic view of faith. She asks Pawel if he feels anything and he says that he loves her. She replies, exactly, that is what God is.
As mentioned before, I came into this TV series with some trepidations about how religious it might be — and the first few segments already include far more discussions of faith that American TV shows. But I like the way Kieslowski personalizes and redefines faith through his characters. Everyone in this episode and beyond have tests of faith ahead of them.
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