A Short Film About Killing
Screening: 23 May 2005
Poland 1988
Directed by Krzysztof Kielowski
Leading players ~ Miroslaw Baka, Krzysztof Globisz, Jan Tesarz.
83 minutes (subtitles)
Synopsis
Jacek, a lost, inept teenager on the outskirts of Warsaw, murders a taxi driver and steals his cab. A year later, after coming to the end of the judicial process, he is hanged.The film is partly a glance at the real effects of poverty, partly a rigorous protest against all killing. Jacek and his victim are neither of them particularly ingratiating characters. The director contrasts the relative happiness of the lawyer Piotr (who learns of passing his exams about the same time as the murder, and of the fact that his wife is happily pregnant at about the time of the hanging). It is the lawyer who is able to listen properly to Jacek and allows us to see something of Jacek’s past with a sympathetic eye.
The film is an expansion of the darkest of the films in Dekalog, ten television films relating the 10 commandments to 20th century urban life. Some of these are light and witty, but all are compassionate. A short film about killing is dark, but one of the most balanced and unpretentious films ever made. One of its effects was to hasten the abolition of the death penalty in the Republic of Poland.
