Breve film sull'uccidere

The bleakest, most powerful of Kieslowski's Dekalog series opens with half the screen black, and the other half full of a cat hanged by the neck from a street railing. Children scamper off in the background, laughing. The words of the title appear over the black. Bam. We're in. And we're not allowed out of this bleak, miserable world until the end credits. We must crawl through a world where humour is exiled and bitterness and cynicism reign, with our eyes fitted with lenses hand-painted by the director, turning Warsaw into a jaded defeated landscape of dirty sepias and dishwater greys. The story is simple; a young man kills a taxi driver and is, in turn, killed by the state. Just as the title says. There is no humour, no light relief. It's awful, somehow beautiful, constantly disturbing. It's dirty and tawdry. While cinema barrages us daily with glib murders by the bucketful, Kieslowski gives us just two, and shows us killing for what it is: a bare foot emerging from a shoe & sock as a dying man writhes; blood and urine dribbling into a plastic tray under the gallows. A film which haunts.

Although this movie concerns itself with one of the paramount taboos, its evocative intensity is kept quite impassive. Perhaps the intention is to allow the viewer the freedom of choice: to either accept consciously, the facts of life, with all its "red in tooth and claw" aspects, {a form of realism}, or to resist the blind, impulsive irrationality of sado- masochistic gratification with all its pathological undertones.

Kieslowski divides his tale into three main parts - the first part introduces the three main characters - the candidate advocate who is being examined by the Board for his Bar entrance - we are introduced to a man of a sensitive nature, thoughtful and unconvinced after four years of practice that punishment is a deterrent {although he concedes that it might be a deterrent ,or at least intimidatory to those for whom crime is not a natural calling}. He offers a reference from Genesis stating that the threat of punishment did not deter Cain from murdering Abel. The next character is a youth who walks aimlessly looking at cinema posters, amusing himself in rebellious and anti-social ways. The third character is a taxi driver who is seen cleaning and shining his car. Kieslowski has given him a rather disagreeable personality.

The second part of the movie has the three main characters slowly and inexorably moving towards each other so that the precise details of their intertwined destinies can be unfolded. The advocate is seen with his wife in the same coffee house as the punkish youth. The youth then randomly selects a taxi to drive him to a desolate country road where in a slowly enacted, drawn out scene, he garottes and bludgeons the taxi driver, who begs for mercy on behalf of his wife and children. The viewer is left in no doubt as to the horror of the act as the youth raises a large stone and smashes the victims head with it.

The movie then experiences a jump cut in editing as the capture and trial of the murderer are omitted and the thread of the story continues with the youth being found guilty. This causes the advocate to go through a soul searching period of whether his defence of the youth was competent. Kieslowski, finally allows the viewer biographical access to the life of the youth/murderer - this is the only part of the movie driven by emotional values as we learn of the tragedies in his life and his need to be reassured that at least in death he would be buried close to his father and sister whom he both obviously loved. This is a brilliant preparatory moment as the viewer is made conscious of this up -to-now abstract figure, who up to this point had elicited no sympathy at all. Now the viewer is jolted into consciousness as the humanity of the murderer transforms him back into a human being.

The third part of the movie - the final curtain, is the carrying out of the death penalty.Unlike Hollywood, where as in "Dead Man Walking", Sean Penn is shown walking to his doom still embracing his pride - Kieslowski depicts the taking of life, first, with the murder of the taxi driver in a long protracted scene, and then with the Judicial murder, a heart wrenching display of fear and struggle leaving the viewer feeling personally assaulted and gut-wrenched {at least that's how I felt}.

Only a master of the practice of art could have pulled this off. When one thinks of what to reference this movie to, other movies don't come to mind. Rather one has to look at literature {as I'm sure Kieslowski did}. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and Musil's "The Man Without Qualities" spring to mind. I take the fact that this movie is to be compared with major works of literary art to be high praise indeed

If you want more than pulp movies then this philosophical discourse on the nature of life and death will leave you somehow enhanced and certainly more aware. Highly recommended.

A very simple film that should make even the extreme right wing supporters of the death penalty at least question their beliefs.

Personally, I am a supporter of capital punishment, and until the final 15 minutes I was still unfazed by the film and clear in my mind that if used correctly it should be implemented. I know all the arguments about capital punishment not affecting crime rates but to be honest I don't really care about that. It's all about an eye for an eye and allowing relatives a degree of closure knowing that the perpetrator who killed their love one had suffered a similar fate.

However, and this is where this film is clever, the film doesn't allow you to see any real background to the character before committing his crime. It allows you to see only the act and judge the character on the act alone. If the film ended at the murder you would also believe capital punishment is not such a bad idea after all. Once we go past the very short trial (A long drawn out trial was rightly skipped as we already know the fate of our young man), and we get the one on one interview with the aspiring anti death penalty barrister we start to see just how screwed up this kid is, and how the rage in him is not entirely of his own making. Just as you start to question if you knew your mind doubts start to creep in and, just as quickly, before you can really gather any coherent thoughts he is whisked away to his death, and the act is entirely as abhorrent as you imagine it would be.

The nasty high risers and grainy colourless backgrounds set the scene well, and the shaded lenses, focusing on the main character highlighting his loneliness and possibly his narrow mindedness made it a rather sad film to watch, but it certainly is worth sticking with.

An 9/10 is definitely warranted

Have you ever just want to lash out at somebody because emotions have been building up inside you for so long? This is what A Short Film About Killing is about. Perfectly executed and realistically pictured. The pacing is phenomenal, the excitement building up to every scene is breath taking and the way the film portrays youth, adults and the sad depravity of humanity is outstanding.

Beyond words, A Short Film About Killing is undoubtedly one of the best films I've seen. Though the subtitles, for English and non-Polish viewers, mildly take away from the metaphoric scenes, this film is beyond fantastic. Very much worthy of all the praise and love that this great film has received.

Kieslowski did something essential, important; he invented something delicate in vision. It is a way of placing self so that the world appears to us as abstract but real. But rich, not simple. Textured, in such a way that the textures are in the environment, rather than objects in the environment.

This is so obvious a place to be that we forget that it was invented, not discovered. Though almost no one else achieves this balance in art, ever, it has become already something we find naturally in ourselves.

The way he achieved this was to divide his creative self, I believe. One part, he kept to himself and used in the ordinary way we do, stumbling into insightful pleasure. The other part he gave to his creative partner and lover and completely bonded the two. In practical terms, his partner created the situations and ordinary narrative shape. Dialogue.

Kieslowski was then free to shape the cinematic environment. In an ambitious project, he worked with what we call short form in ten related small films made for TeeVee. These are amazingly rich, experimental, successful. They are where he found and gave us that balance between outside and inside: observation and intimacy, narrative fold that vanishes.

But at the same time, he knew they were only sketches of what could be. He needed to take that careful balance into the long form. Now this is a major challenge, because all of a sudden the narrative becomes a spine, not a melody. It becomes the path in the environment. The environment in his carefully conceived balance now has to be dynamic. He did later achieve this in "Three Colors," one of the most important adventures in cinema.

The way he got there was by taking two of the ten decalogue films and making them long form projects. He did not do this — as is generally believed — by simply adding footage to make a short film longer. He completely reimagined the thing from scratch. It is, in fact wholly different, though all the bits of the small project are in it, they are now part of a flow. Though the thing is longer, there are many more mysteries, more story not exposed but placed in the space alone. There is a hint of multiple observation.

There is meaning now, in the car door that mysteriously closes as we see the killer dragging the body to the water.

We owe this man, this project, this killer a lot.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.