This short film about killing is an extended part of the series of ten shorts by Kieslowski cataloging his renditions of the ten commandments. Despite of the nature of the series, Kieslowski tones down the Christianity, with only a brief glimpse of faith near the end when a priest blesses the convicted boy at his execution. The film is not meant to be a religious didactic but instead an objective or anecdotal sonnet with underlying moral anxiety. Aesthetically, its visual form takes precedence over the films content. The director uses weird filters which obscure parts of the frame and add a sickly greenish tint to enhance the grit and griminess of the action. The symbolism does not work metaphorically or as allusions. Rather, the lens lingers on absurd things like a cat hanging from a noose and a cartoonish devil head as if to ridicule symbolism and blasé foreshadowing.
Another aesthetic point is the sound track. The somber symphonic strings ad weight to the film's emotion which is otherwise scant. Posing itself as an observation or cinematic study of the cruelty of humanity, the audience gets a an unsympathetic perspective without additional romanticism or exaggeration. This is not leisurely entertainment but critical, harsh, and pushing for honesty.
The film is a study of two murders and an idealistic new lawyer. The unlikeable young hooligan murders the unlikeable old taxi driver during an excruciating 15 minute scene that vividly plants itself in your memory. Again, no room for sympathies, lots of space for wallowing in filth and coldblooded murder. However, Kieslowski preserves his unique brush strokes with the intensity of color, contrast, composition, and the use of filters to give real-life grit an artistic perspective in film. With regard to the murders, nothing is left out. The camera expects us to appreciate every gruesome detail and emotion, from start to finish, from head to toe, from inside out. If we can bring ourselves to sympathize at all, it may be the moments where the young killer wishes, if only I had done things that way instead of this, further insisting on wallowing, on comprehension. If film is the best medium to inspire action among the masses, as Walter Benjamin suggested in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Kieslowski seems to be playing on this possibility by directing his audience to face what happens in their own society, to feel Poland's moral anxiety it this time, ourselves.
The idealistic lawyer, fresh out of law school, is a figure one can easily identify with. His is the only psychology the spectator is privy to. He is compassionate, persistent, assertive, handsome, and perhaps the apple of the fortune tellers eye. Ok, maybe a little heavy handed here. It seems that the suggestion here is identify with the goodhearted lawyer. I was sold, especially after the final scene of the film which dwells on the pain of our sexy lawyer and the closeup of his teary eyes. The spectator is alienated from the remaining characters. No psychology whatsoever behind the young boy's murder. No investigation of the crime and very little of the court scene. We forget to care about those points since the action on camera is so heavy and demanding and our eyes and ears soak up the beautiful tones and strings. We do get a little background when the film is ready to stir up our anxieties. The boy is only 20 years old, his precious younger sister killed in an accident for which he is somewhat to blame, he expresses huge regret and we watch him hysterically breakdown in despair. If that wasn't enough to upset us, the chilling unforgettable sequence at the end adds additional twists of the knife. I felt as if I was challenged to act by the end of this film.
No comments:
Post a Comment