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Saturday, Mar 11, 1989
A Short Film about Killing (Krótki film o zabijaniu) Canceled. Substitute film: Mother of Kings (A.K.A. Sons and Comrades) (116 mins).
Disturbing and deeply pessimistic, A Short Film about Killing has inspired anguished debate wherever it has shown. This absolutely uncompromising attack on capital punishment "follows the movements of three apparently unconnected characters: an unemployed adolescent, a taxi-driver, and a young lawyer whose paths mysteriously cross as they become protagonists in an intense drama of life and death. The film is organized around two different crimes: first, the killing by the youth (all the more grisly for his bungling), and second, the killer's execution carried out by prison authorities with equal attention to detail, leaving the young lawyer to consider his own complicity in a death sanctioned by the penal code. Intricate detailing of the flow of events leading to these two irrevocable acts adds a human dimension, rendering the characters as vulnerable to a crime as to its punishment." (Dimitri Eipides, Toronto) Krzysztof Kieslowski (Blind Chance, SFIFF 1988) confirms his status as one of contemporary cinema's most rigorous moralists and compelling artists with this film, the first in his ambitious series devoted to the decalogue.
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