Revisiting "The Killing Short"

Keenan 2022-03-23 09:03:29

Due to the upcoming trip to Poland, I recently re-examined Kielovsky's works. Keith is the director I fell in love with when I first fell in love with movies in college. The first time I bought the director's complete works was his works. In the following years, I have dabbled in the works of more and more directors, and the breadth and depth of watching movies have changed. I occasionally have concerns about whether my love for Keith will change if I watch it again. Now it seems that this concern is superfluous. The rhythm and tone of Keith's works are just right for me personally, and his fragmented creations are also what I would like to appreciate and choose.

Let's talk about "Murder Short Film" first, this is a work that people have to say after watching it. Judging the goodness of a film work, for me, it is usually the first intuition based on artistic aesthetics. If we tell the truth, there may be several criteria: the length of the work that stays in your mind after watching it. The intensity of the film, whether it stimulates your desire to express and think; whether it enriches your experience of the world in breadth or depth; its originality and inspiration in the language of the film, "Oh, it can still be shot like this. !"

In this film, Keith expresses his doubts about the death penalty, but how to achieve this doubt through a murder case without falling into the stereotypes? In terms of narrative and film structure, Keith first used seemingly rambling and trivial language to lay the groundwork for nearly half of the film to describe the various daily encounters of the murderer Jacques, the lawyer and the slain taxi driver on the day of the murder. Jacques is a heavy pen, and the weight of lawyers and taxi drivers cannot be ignored; in the following court trial scenes, Keith used bold omissions: Jacques told the reason for his murder in court or wept bitterly to confess; The irrationality of the death penalty was impassionedly debated in court; scenes that viewers might have expected were all omitted. Keith almost only explained the judge's announcement of the death penalty and the reactions of the people present. In Keith's view, any emotional or verbal doubts about the "reasonableness of the death penalty" may have already been expressed in lawyers' qualifying interviews: "Punishment is a form of revenge, especially when it is intended to harm the criminal rather than prevent it. When committing a crime," and need not be repeated hereafter. The expression really needed is reality itself. Keith gave up using the camera to show people's attitudes, and instead showed a prison staff who walked through the prison door after door to the execution site. He was checking all the details that might affect the smooth execution of the execution. He was pulling on the firmness of the rope. ; A group of executives blindfolded Jacques, who was struggling with death fear, and put on a rope to complete the fluke, and the forensic doctor determined his death. In the process of unraveling this reality, you will find that Jacques strangled the taxi driver with a rope, and the law also used a rope to execute the murderer Jacques. The rope served two functions of murder and execution, but the results were the same. : that is to lead to the end of a life. Keith's sober presentation brings an astonishing fact: the death penalty is an overt imitation of the means of murder, and it reproduces the atrocities in a legitimate form in the process of punishing murderous atrocities. Next, you will take the initiative to question, even if this questioning brings unease: The death penalty that punishes murder is also murder, is this law of "violating violence with violence" reasonable? The problem then arises. Punishment for evil is necessary, but how do we punish it?

The greatness of Keith lies in his attitude. He does not impose his doubts by avoiding the evil of evil itself or the goodness of those who exaggerate it. From a certain point of view, he is objective and neutral. All aspects are presented in front of your eyes, and the right and wrong are left to the audience to judge; from another point of view, Keith is extremely clear-cut and clear in his position: evil is evil, and it must not be whitewashed; unreasonable is unreasonable, and there must be no hesitation. In the foreshadowing of the first half of the film, he did not hide the evil of Jacques, a bored young man. He threw stones at passing vehicles on the overpass, scare away pigeons in the square, pushed strangers down in the toilet, and drank in the leftover coffee. Spitting, killing a person for no reason... For Jacques' evil deeds, the director holds the same attitude as the audience: disgust. Under the director's camera, the entire process and details of Jacques' murderous murder are not omitted at all. Obviously, the director does not intend to cover up and defend the evil of murder for any reason. On the contrary, he shows you with a direct look. This is evil. Keith's description of the victim's taxi driver is also intriguing. It not only shows that the driver's business performance is excellent, he feeds stray dogs with sandwiches on the road, but also shows that he tried to molest the girl and deliberately abandoned the long-awaited customers. It is the trivial life and small good and small evil of an ordinary person. Don't think that this is the director's superfluous act. This is the director's observation of the driver's life before his death. Life is mediocre and human nature is imperfect. This is the reality of most people. The director does not accuse the evil of murder by portraying a driver who shines with humanity or whose life is enough to win the sympathy of others. Perhaps, he intends to say that the evil of murder does not lie in the harm to the good (of course, evil must inevitably be Injuring the good), but for the destruction of the ordinary life, the destruction of the living, it is evil in itself, not evil by killing a good person, but good by killing a bad person. Under this line of thought, Jacques' execution did not make us feel happy and feel the victory of kindness; the reason why Jacques was sympathetic was not that he revealed his thoughts about his dead sister and his mother in his conversation with his lawyer before his death. but rather his fear and struggle of losing his life, as well as the violent nature of the execution weapon and the execution process. This is the greatness and profoundness of Keith. He peels off goodness and justice to talk about the essence of evil. His respect and care for life itself is based on the greatest human right of "to live".

View more about A Short Film About Killing reviews

Extended Reading
  • Darien 2022-03-28 09:01:13

    Compared with the changes in the short TV version, the lawyer interview and the ending, the film is more lively and dull, and it takes off the taste of the propositional composition of the Ten Commandments. Of course, the TV version has already expressed it very well, the sad alienation of human murder and system murder, and the murder short film is more like a dirge of life (death, youth, lawyer).

  • Brice 2022-03-23 09:03:29

    What Kieslowski's "Murdering Short Film" tells us is that the right to intentionally kill a murderer for any purpose, even to preserve the common happiness of mankind, is still a reprehensible crime. "Dancer in the Darkness" tells the same story. Of course, it is also a shameful crime to have a tyrant stand on the gallows.

A Short Film About Killing quotes

  • Jacek Lazar: I didn't listen in court, not until you called to me. They were all... all against me.

    Piotr Balicki: Against what you did.

    Jacek Lazar: Same thing...

  • Piotr: So you want me to see your mother.

    Jacek: Yes, to ask her to bury me next to my father. Can I be buried in a cemetery?

    Piotr: Yes.

    Jacek: The priest they sent said I could.

    Piotr: Naturally.

    Jacek: Next to my father is another plot. It was supposed to be for my mother. Ask her to let me have it.