A Short Film About Killing

Kieslowski as a religion, and he was that for a time in my home country, passed me by. I came of age as a viewer after he was gone so belatedly I set out to fill this blind spot with a series of viewings. Watching every single thing he made is not an aim, rather it's getting to know the worldview, how he grows and deepens, with an eye on finally encountering his celebrated color films.

I chose this as a start, it seemed like it would be neither too early nor too late, and could serve as preparation for mounting the Dekalog. He does give a poignant sketch of world, one where tethers have snapped and released people into aimless orbits and meaningless actions. A cat being hanged by kids is the first image that greets us.

A man, two men, wander around the city, one as the other's mirrored parallel life, both unsatisfied. One is waiting to become a lawyer, a life of order awaits him where stories reach a verdict that decides right and wrong but he questions these answers. The other has no story ahead of him, wanders around with nothing to do, becomes mischievous for no reason, debases his own food, chases away pigeons out of reaction.

This is all so we can revisit him later in a prison cell and know him now as someone's brother. The idea is that behind the facade of meaningless violence lies a human being broken by a callous whim of chance, a sister that died one day and something snapped.

I prefer here the opening sketch of a twilight world, with people going down empty streets, peering here and there as if to find a crack that leads out somewhere or back in. The morality play is too simple for my taste; as simple as the legal system it chastises that just wants to wrap up a case.

The effortless ease with which Kieslowski sketches that world tells me this is something that has already began to take form as worldview and that he's going to expand as he goes. This is an expanded entry from Dekalog which I'm going to visit in the coming days.

But right away I leave with this contrast; a world that breathes around a protagonist who walks through it and suggests open threads that come back, and the desire to narrow down these threads into a room (the prison cell) where all this breath becomes words that explain. The latter is too convenient here, the former abstract enough to interest me. Now onwards to Love.