Dekalog 2: 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain'

Bardini plays a consultant at the local hospital, a lonely, diffident man in his sixties, who has just begun to relate, in weekly instalments, the sad story of his life (his wife and children were killed during the war). A neighbour (Janda), a chain-smoker, knocks insistently on his door, much to his annoyance, demanding news of her husband, a patient of his who may be dying of cancer. Her problem, it transpires, is that she is pregnant (by another), and the decision whether she has an abortion or not is dependent on the survival or otherwise of her husband. The consultant refuses to play God by saying whether the husband will live or die. As he says, 'I have a God, but it's only enough for me'. As in Dekalog 1, the film's power comes from the precise, economic delineation of character and circumstance.