This is easily one of the finest films ever made - a searing social indictment against murder in all it's forms and the justification of a crime on the basis of human emotion, without cloying sentimentality or the reliance of stereotypes, which clearly demonstrates Kieslowski's firm understanding of cinematic storytelling concerns, juxtaposed with certain elements germane to the human-issues documentary movement that was popular in Europe in the mid-1970's. This film would be an important step within Kieslowski's cinematic works, in so much as it would represent the beginning of phase-two of the filmmaker's fascinating career (as well as giving him a much needed degree of international success that would allow him to progress on to those other life changing works, The Double Life of Veronique and The Three Colours Trilogy). This film can be seen as a stepping-stone to those projects, as the director effortlessly moves away from the more rigid socio-political aspects of his early documentaries and feature films (like Camera Buff), and more towards a cinema free of those realist limitations or clichés, with ideas of chance and emotion really taking precedence over the narrative to offer us more than the usual dogmatic (European) concerns.
Though the title is simplified to the point of irony, the film has a lot things going on, with Kieslowski on the one hand presenting a moral and humane message (and a visual essay on the ironies of murder and state-funded execution), as well as the depiction of the central character who, as a product of modern alienation is never allowed to stray into the realms of caricature, making the performance of lead actor Miroslaw Baka one that resonates alongside other cinematic depictions of similarly tortured outsiders from films like Taxi Driver and Naked. Added to this, we have the world created by Kieslowski and his technicians that is neither reality nor fantasy, but rather, some in-between living hell, with a continually desolate atmosphere of damp melancholy that few films can equate. Right from the opening scene, the filmmaker paints a portrait of bleaker than bleak squalor, creating a place where children hang cats from drainpipes for kicks, whilst wandering misfits drop rocks from a motorway over-pass, all the while watched by soulless, faceless vessels that peer from the windows of suffocating, claustrophobia-inducing tower-blocks.
The central image of the peripatetic loner drifting from town to town with the weight of the world on his shoulders is a universal one, prevalent in both literature and cinema history, though it is important to note that Kieslowski never allows his character to plumb the depths of melodrama in the way similar anti-heroes might, by denying us of a first-act back-story. This makes the character all the more enigmatic... a broken-down loser burning with inner torment that we cannot understand, until it is too late. The real crux of the story (and the moral centre to both the film and the character) doesn't become clear until mid-way into the second act, in which the director allows for moments of empathy and compassion, whilst simultaneously drawing parallels between the ideas of murder in the name of hate and murder in the name of the law. The two murder scenes that close act one and two respectively are, without question, the most devastating moments of cinema that I can ever recall seeing. The atmosphere that is created by the director and that matter-of-fact frankness in how the action is captured (with honesty and conviction) permeates through the nuances of the actors every expression and allows for the transformation from mere performer, through to the fragmented reflection of a real human being. This makes the prolonging of the violence and the character's painful desperation all the more heartbreaking, because Kieslowski understands his characters, and more importantly, understands his actors. The mood and feeling of an expressionistic viewpoint is further heightened throughout by cinematographer Slavomir Idziak's use of colour, composition and strange approach to focus, as he employs an "optical smudge" over one half of the screen in order to draw the audience's attention to what the filmmaker considers integral to the story at that particular point in time.
The world of A Short Film About Killing is as murky and as troubled as the mind of our protagonist, with a great reliance on the colours, yellow, brown and green. This depressing pallet almost chokes us in the final scenes, when only a few sources of urine-tinged light are allowed to break through the darkness onto the tear-drenched face of the young killer during that amazing dialogue between the murderer and his solicitor towards the film's unflinching climax. However, beneath the drab locations and austere realisation of the text, A Short Film About Killing has a strong emotional undercurrent throughout, though for much of the film it is kept secondary to the central message so as to avoid the kind of clichés rampant in this kind of film. As with the work of other directors from the same social-realist background, Kieslowski doesn't offer the viewer any easy answers - we don't get the last minute pardon, or the spoken word narration heaping forgiveness on the world, or a crescendo of violins to further the melodrama - this filmmaker presents us with a simple story and allows us to come to our own conclusions.
Kieslowski, alongside Bergman, Tarkovsky and a further select few, is one of the all time genius filmmakers, and this is his masterpiece. A shocking work that forces the audience to ask some deep questions without the promise of easy answers. As a result of this, it isn't enough to simply declare it one of the greatest films of the 1980's, as this is a rare film that demonstrates the true potential of cinema as an artistic medium... a film that everyone should experience, at least once.
Though the title is simplified to the point of irony, the film has a lot things going on, with Kieslowski on the one hand presenting a moral and humane message (and a visual essay on the ironies of murder and state-funded execution), as well as the depiction of the central character who, as a product of modern alienation is never allowed to stray into the realms of caricature, making the performance of lead actor Miroslaw Baka one that resonates alongside other cinematic depictions of similarly tortured outsiders from films like Taxi Driver and Naked. Added to this, we have the world created by Kieslowski and his technicians that is neither reality nor fantasy, but rather, some in-between living hell, with a continually desolate atmosphere of damp melancholy that few films can equate. Right from the opening scene, the filmmaker paints a portrait of bleaker than bleak squalor, creating a place where children hang cats from drainpipes for kicks, whilst wandering misfits drop rocks from a motorway over-pass, all the while watched by soulless, faceless vessels that peer from the windows of suffocating, claustrophobia-inducing tower-blocks.
The central image of the peripatetic loner drifting from town to town with the weight of the world on his shoulders is a universal one, prevalent in both literature and cinema history, though it is important to note that Kieslowski never allows his character to plumb the depths of melodrama in the way similar anti-heroes might, by denying us of a first-act back-story. This makes the character all the more enigmatic... a broken-down loser burning with inner torment that we cannot understand, until it is too late. The real crux of the story (and the moral centre to both the film and the character) doesn't become clear until mid-way into the second act, in which the director allows for moments of empathy and compassion, whilst simultaneously drawing parallels between the ideas of murder in the name of hate and murder in the name of the law. The two murder scenes that close act one and two respectively are, without question, the most devastating moments of cinema that I can ever recall seeing. The atmosphere that is created by the director and that matter-of-fact frankness in how the action is captured (with honesty and conviction) permeates through the nuances of the actors every expression and allows for the transformation from mere performer, through to the fragmented reflection of a real human being. This makes the prolonging of the violence and the character's painful desperation all the more heartbreaking, because Kieslowski understands his characters, and more importantly, understands his actors. The mood and feeling of an expressionistic viewpoint is further heightened throughout by cinematographer Slavomir Idziak's use of colour, composition and strange approach to focus, as he employs an "optical smudge" over one half of the screen in order to draw the audience's attention to what the filmmaker considers integral to the story at that particular point in time.
The world of A Short Film About Killing is as murky and as troubled as the mind of our protagonist, with a great reliance on the colours, yellow, brown and green. This depressing pallet almost chokes us in the final scenes, when only a few sources of urine-tinged light are allowed to break through the darkness onto the tear-drenched face of the young killer during that amazing dialogue between the murderer and his solicitor towards the film's unflinching climax. However, beneath the drab locations and austere realisation of the text, A Short Film About Killing has a strong emotional undercurrent throughout, though for much of the film it is kept secondary to the central message so as to avoid the kind of clichés rampant in this kind of film. As with the work of other directors from the same social-realist background, Kieslowski doesn't offer the viewer any easy answers - we don't get the last minute pardon, or the spoken word narration heaping forgiveness on the world, or a crescendo of violins to further the melodrama - this filmmaker presents us with a simple story and allows us to come to our own conclusions.
Kieslowski, alongside Bergman, Tarkovsky and a further select few, is one of the all time genius filmmakers, and this is his masterpiece. A shocking work that forces the audience to ask some deep questions without the promise of easy answers. As a result of this, it isn't enough to simply declare it one of the greatest films of the 1980's, as this is a rare film that demonstrates the true potential of cinema as an artistic medium... a film that everyone should experience, at least once.