DIRECTOR'S `DECALOGUE' VIEWABLE AGAIN IN U.S.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Due to conflicts over North American distribution rights, ``The Decalogue,'' one of the great masterpieces of world cinema, has been all but impossible to see in the United States for almost a dozen years. But it's finally being telecast on cable's Sundance Channel, starting tonight at 9.

The supreme achievement of Poland's late, filmmaking philosopher king Krzysztof Kieslowski (``Three Colors: Red, White and Blue''), ``The Decalogue'' consists of 10 one-hour dramas made for Polish television in 1988 and '89. Each story takes one of the Ten Commandments as a jumping-off point for exploring complicated moral and spiritual dilemmas in the modern world.

Set in and around a large Warsaw apartment complex that's home to assorted professionals (doctors, lawyers, college professors, philharmonic musicians) at the tail end of the communist regime, each segment is a discrete story. Most were shot by a different, brilliant cinematographer and the whole cycle features a who's who of Poland's best actors.

Some characters and even plot lines make brief appearances in other episodes, but every chapter is richly, rewardingly complete within itself. The 10 of them put together add up, quite simply, to as thorough a mosaic of human behavior as has ever been committed to film.

Though biblically based and certainly concerned with, among other things, the nature of man's relationship to God, the films are anything but sanctimonious (or, for that matter, the faithless opposite). Rather, they constantly examine the myriad ways in which any system mankind tries to apply to ordering the world - religion, science, politics, ethics, law, economics - can fail in the face of messy human nature.

Making ``The Decalogue'' even more profound is the fact that Kieslowski and his co-writer, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, though ironists of a high order, are not cynics. They acknowledge the necessity of organizing principles in life, however limited their effectiveness may be.

The most outstanding of ``The Decalogue's'' many fine qualities, however, is its enveloping, empathetic humanism. People do careless, arrogant, selfish and even monstrous things throughout the 10 chapters, yet we come away feeling that we understand all of them in the deepest way imaginable, in all their loneliness, passion, disappointment . . . Above all, their rationales for doing what they do in an imperfect world. It's a remarkable achievement, considering how relatively short a time we spend in each individual's company.

In 1994, during one of his last interviews before retiring from filmmaking (and, two years later, succumbing to a heart attack), Kieslowski explained the sympathetic philosophy that guided his probing, aching and exhilaratingly forgiving art.

``I think it all stems from the fact that I don't know anything about morality myself,'' Kieslowski said. ``I really don't know anything for real, and I don't know how to live, either. Therefore, I cannot tell anybody what's good and what's bad. These are the issues that should be left to the people who know things about them; the politicians, teachers and priests know about it, so I don't have to.''

Like I said, Kieslowski was a world-class ironist. But he couldn't disguise his inextinguishable interest in the most important matters of heart and soul.

``Of course, I always look into it,'' he said. ``But you see, I am the kind of guy who poses questions. There are people who are assigned to present answers, and then there are people like me.''

The first two ``Decalogues'' premiere on Sundance tonight. They will be rerun, along with the other eight chapters, throughout the month of May. Check your local cable listings for dates and times.

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Photo: Krystyna Janda stars in the second part of Krzysztof Kieslowski's ``Decalogue'' series, now on The Sundance Channel.