Decalogue Three
Garrett Lambur

In the third Decalogue film, the commandment being addressed is remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy. This seems as if it could be a pretty easy commandment to follow, just keep your Sabbath day, be it Saturday, Sunday or whatever day as a respect toward God. Well the Decalogue takes place on the holiest of holy day’s, Christmas. A taxi driver takes his ex around looking for her husband. As we know, the husband ends up being a fake himself who had left her sometime before and she had set up the escapades of the night to keep the taxi river with her. Yet there is a twist thrown into the mix, at the end she states that if she had spent the time alone or if he had left before a certain time she would have swallowed these pills and committed suicide. Without this possible loss of life than the taxi driver spending the night away from his family justifiably could be seen as breaking the Sabbath. But as the taxi driver saves the woman’s life, albeit in a twisted and backwards way, shouldn’t he be allowed to break the Sabbath? Can there ever be a situation where one is allowed to break the Commandments?

People can almost always come up with justification for breaking laws in real life, “I didn’t make the law, why should I follow it?” or “The law is unfair thus should not be followed.” But how many people can come up with justification for breaking rules supposedly set down by an ultimate higher being, the creator of life. Those who do not believe in God could easily dismiss the Commandments saying they should only apply to believers or followers of Christianity. This may be true, but many of the commandments are guidelines that if followed make life easier and happier for many. For the religious it is much easier, the commandments are the word of God, the laws given unto the people that they must follow. But in order to help everyone, as is shown in the film, sometimes it is necessary to set aside a law in order to fight a greater evil. The man set aside his family, although for possibly the wrong reasons, to help this woman find her husband. His action in the end helped to save her life. Setting aside the law to fight a greater evil does not mean setting aside what you believe in because as soon as this is set aside then you can no longer separate good from evil. Your beliefs allow you to create a scale upon which to judge good versus evil. Thus there may be situations that present themselves where in order to fight or save someone you must set aside the law or rather commandment.