8/25/2023 0 Comments Thou shalt not kill film![]() Certain scholars have suggested that this is not the most accurate translation. Traditional translations of this phrase into English have tended to use the word kill. Seen as an admonition against murder, the sixth commandment often forms the philosophical foundation for arguments against suicide, capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, war, and any other situation where one person might be inclined to take the life of another. Originating in the Books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, this phrase was originally given to Moses and the Israelite people by God as one of the great commandments and is found in the holy scriptures of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The implication is that such certainty can provide the excuse for any type of act - that anything can be rationalized and justified by the powers of regulation.The phrase "Thou shalt not kill" is well known throughout the world as one of the Ten Commandments. Yet it is the moral certainty that informs the young man’s punishment that is shocking. Furthermore, the person he murders is portrayed without the slightest hint of compassion. There is no possibility of the wrong man being executed. There is no doubt that the state is “correct” in pronouncing the young man guilty. Thou Shalt Not Kill depicts the instability of moral authority, as represented by the state. It merely produces another act that mirrors itself. The investigation of the first murder does not produce a rational justification or mitigating circumstances. The elision of what might be expected to follow such a horrific act, i.e., the explication of the crime through the police or trial process, reinforces the similarities between the two events. For example, the transition from the initial murder to the scene of the killer in jail awaiting his own death is accomplished by a surprisingly brief courtroom scene in which the young man is pronounced guilty and sentenced. Kieslowski’s reductive narrative style helps account for the film’s almost physical effect on the spectator. His death seems more like a mugging in a parking lot than a systematic rendering of justice by a higher moral authority. Later, when the prisoner starts to struggle, just before his sentence is to be carried out, the various steps which have been minutely planned by the prison authorities come completely unravelled. The cabbie is, in turn, strangled around the neck and mouth, pummeled with a tire iron, and smashed in the face with a rock before he finally expires. ![]() Both are characterized by a series of clumsy, inept actions. The killing of the cab driver and the execution of his murderer are excruciatingly blunt. After drawing these narrative lines, Kieslowski quickly connects them: the young man murders the cab driver, and the state appoints the lawyer to represent him at his trial. A sadistic taxi driver, nearly comically repugnant, appears next, followed by an idealistic lawyer who has just passed his bar exam. A disturbed man, in his early twenties, wanders around a Polish city, enveloped in a sort of violent haze, the reasons for which are unclear. The film begins by following the paths of three separate characters. They represent nothing beyond themselves-two frighteningly brutal events. They are not mere pretexts on which to base a film they do not trigger a police story, a whodunit, or a series of subsequent actions. Its emphasis is on two violent acts, one condoned and one condemned by the state. The title of Krysztof Kieslowski’s film, Thou Shalt Not Kill, 1988, is bluntly explanatory. Eventually, we realize that the animals represent the fates of two of the film’s characters: one is senselessly murdered and the other is killed by the state for his actions. It is followed by a shot of a cat that has just been hung by a gang of children. The first shot is of a dead rat in a murky puddle.
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