TheLittleSongbird The more work I see of Krzysztof Kieslowski, the stronger the feeling that he was an incredibly gifted director, responsible for some brilliant work, taken from us too soon.Have yet to see anything bad from him, with even my least favourite (the eighth episode of 'Dekalog') still being very good, with the masterful 'Dekalog' and 'Three Colors: Red' (all three "Three Colors" films are must watches, but especially 'Red') being particularly great. Originally the fifth episode of 'Dekalog', and one of its finest episodes, 'A Short Film About Killing' was expanded into a feature length film and the result is something quite brilliant.As ever, 'A Short Film About Killing' is visually striking, gritty yet beautiful with many thoughtful and emotionally powerful images lingering long into the memory. Kieslowski's direction is quietly unobtrusive, intelligently paced and never too heavy, and the music is suitably intricate.On top of that, the story is creepy (reminding any Fyodor Dostoyevsky readers of 'Crime and Punishment') with some shocking scenes and a wide range of emotions. It really shows Kieslowski's mastery of narrative construction and also was impressed with how the subject matter was told very matter of factly but still with incredible emotional power.The themes and ideals are used to full potential, and the characters and their relationships and conflicts feel so real and emotionally resonant without being heavy-handed. The sparse dialogue is bleak, thought-provoking with some real pathos at times, parts that really chill and some subtle black humour. The complexity and nuance of the acting is to be very much admired, with Mirosław Baka's once seen never forgotten performance standing out.All in all, brilliant. 10/10 Bethany Cox

chaos-rampant 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.

Ilpo Hirvonen In 1985 Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski became acquainted with two men: Zbigniew Preisner and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, both of whom weren't that familiar with film industry. Eventually Kieslowski decided to make his next film No End (1985) with these two men; Piesiewicz as the screenwriter with Kieslowski and Preisner as the score composer. Shortly after the film was released Piesiewicz got an idea to make a film about The Ten Commandments. The idea fascinated Kieslowski but he didn't like the idea to make just a film but to make ten films, each dealing with one commandment. They got their idea working, the Polish television agreed to produce it and Zbigniew Preisner composed a score for each of the episodes. Krzysztof Kieslowski decided to make two theatrical versions of two episodes of The Decalogue (The Ten Commandments); Decalogue five Thou shalt not kill (A Short Film About Killing) and Decalogue six Thou shalt not commit adultery (A Short Film About Love). In each of the episodes of The Decalogue Kieslowski used a different cinematographer and let him to give the film his own visual touch. Decalogue five / A Short Film About Killing was filmed by Slawomir Idziak who also filmed The Double Life of Veronique (1991) and Three Colours: Blue (1993).Three persons whose lives have no connections with each other are presented to us. A taxi driver, a new lawyer and a young 21-year-old boy Jacek. One day Jacek decides to kill the taxi driver for an unknown reason. After the difficult murder he gets arrested and the new lawyer takes his case. Jacek gets sentenced to death and the lawyer is forced to witness the first death of his client. This same pattern is shown to us in the first pictures we see: a dead rat in the gutter, a hung cat and a group of boys (the society) running away. Kieslowski was always interested in the coincidental events that can change the course of our lives. What kind of a turn happens in life when something unexpected happens? There are some turning points in life when important things happen and important choices are made, which can guide our life. "I believe that there are invisible threads that bond people together. The question is to find those threads." - K. Kieslowski. In his earlier film Blind Chance (1981) he dealt with fate and destiny by showing different variations of the protagonist's life.The theatrical version is 25 minutes longer than the television version, but the length isn't the only difference between them. In Decalogue five the perspective is the lawyer's and in the film it is the boy's. The episode studies the commandment thou shalt not kill and the film just killing in general. Many have seen it as a film against capital punishment but Kieslowski didn't intend that. Sure he as a humanist is against capital punishment, but the film is a charge against violence in general. It just happened to be that after the film was released capital punishment was a current topic in the Polish media.To create the repulsive Polish reality the cinematographer Slawomir Idziak got the idea of using colored lens, especially green ones. Green is often supposed to be the color of fresh, new beginning and spring. But when you put them in a camera the world turns into something obnoxious. Kieslowski wanted to show the world which was even uglier than reality. By this technical element Kieslowski was also able to delimit the picture more and delete all the useless things away from it. "Films of today are far too prolix. What isn't necessarily important should be cut out." In addition to the severe aesthetics Kieslowski also took a lot of "useless stuff" away from the storyline. He didn't film the trial of the boy, because it isn't relevant or interesting. "We the people should be interested in people." In his interview book Kieslowski on Kieslowski published by Danusia Stok, Kieslowski says that there were three reasons why he made A Short Film About Killing. The first: death penalty; the fact that someone gets killed by the society of Poland happens in Kieslowski's name because he's a citizen of Poland and he didn't want it to happen. The second reason was that to Kieslowski's mind killing is always wrong, no matter what the reasons were, who got killed and who was the killer. The third reason was that Kieslowski wanted to film the Polish world, which is pretty grim and dull. The audience never gets to know why the boy kills the taxi driver and that is very relevant. What we do get to know are the reasons of the society which rest on the law, but we don't know the true humane reasons - and won't ever know. The film is about killing but also about loneliness; that profound loneliness in us all. All the characters of the film live alone and can't decide about anyone's fate but their own. It's a tale about loneliness which lives in our society, where people desperately try to get connection with each other. In our western world people quite paradoxically want to get out of the fuss and live in peace, miles away from other people. But at the same most of the people say that the thing they fear the most is loneliness; to be left alone.A Short Film About Killing is a charge against violence. Capital punishment is the most radical form of violence one can imagine. The film achieves to bond violence and capital punishment, and to resist capital punishment as a form of violence. It is a profound film about loneliness in us all and how small things can change the course of our lives.

tedg Kieslowski did something essential, important; he invented something delicate in vision. It is a way of placing self so that the world appears to us as abstract but real. But rich, not simple. Textured, in such a way that the textures are in the environment, rather than objects in the environment.This is so obvious a place to be that we forget that it was invented, not discovered. Though almost no one else achieves this balance in art, ever, it has become already something we find naturally in ourselves.The way he achieved this was to divide his creative self, I believe. One part, he kept to himself and used in the ordinary way we do, stumbling into insightful pleasure. The other part he gave to his creative partner and lover and completely bonded the two. In practical terms, his partner created the situations and ordinary narrative shape. Dialogue.Kieslowski was then free to shape the cinematic environment. In an ambitious project, he worked with what we call short form in ten related small films made for TeeVee. These are amazingly rich, experimental, successful. They are where he found and gave us that balance between outside and inside: observation and intimacy, narrative fold that vanishes.But at the same time, he knew they were only sketches of what could be. He needed to take that careful balance into the long form. Now this is a major challenge, because all of a sudden the narrative becomes a spine, not a melody. It becomes the path in the environment. The environment in his carefully conceived balance now has to be dynamic. He did later achieve this in "Three Colors," one of the most important adventures in cinema.The way he got there was by taking two of the ten decalogue films and making them long form projects. He did not do this — as is generally believed — by simply adding footage to make a short film longer. He completely reimagined the thing from scratch. It is, in fact wholly different, though all the bits of the small project are in it, they are now part of a flow. Though the thing is longer, there are many more mysteries, more story not exposed but placed in the space alone. There is a hint of multiple observation.There is meaning now, in the car door that mysteriously closes as we see the killer dragging the body to the water.We owe this man, this project, this killer a lot.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.