A Favorite: Dekalog V "Thou shalt not kill"

The greatest of Kieslowski's miniseries is V "Thou Shalt Not Kill." The cinematography is extraordinary. If I were to make movies, I'd give every film this nostalgic old Polaroid look. Every shot is desaturated and glorious to look at. It's a lot like the look you get when you watch a Tarkovsky film (see also Kiesloski's "Double Life of Veronique"). "Dekalog V" is an intense, disturbing look at acts of killing. As is standard with Kieslowski, the story begins with
multiple characters whose paths cross in unexpected ways. Here the characters are three in number. One character is a young lawyer. We see him telling a harrowing story about murder to a journalist. He is idealistic and strongly opposes capital punishment. Another is a taxi driver who lives in the apartment complex that connects all of the characters in "Dekalog." (It really is too bad it's not the taxi driver from part III.) We observe that he is sort of an asshole. He refuses to pick up some people, honks at dogs, and creepily leers at young women. The third character is a twenty year old aimlessly walking around looking to stir up trouble. He scares pigeons away from their feeder, lets rocks drop on cars from an overpass, and flings coffee at coffee shop windows. Interestingly, Kieslowski paints the twenty year old in a sympathetic light unlike the taxi driver. Both do unmistakably mean acts, but we sympathize with the twenty year old and find ourselves angry with the taxi

diver. This has to do with how he (a) sets up the mean acts in the narrative, (b) depicts them through camera work and editing, and (c) directs his respective actors' facial expressions. It's really genius how he does it. He's such a meticulous film-maker, and it shows in every sequence. Speaking of the editing: in general, it is constructive. There are few establishing shots. The viewer sees only close-ups of the characters. We have to construct their environment from many close-ups. This emphasizes each of the main character's isolation from one another and others in the film. Many have interpreted the film to be a statement against capital punishment. In fact, it is simply about killing in general. Unlike in most films, both killings in the film focus on the brutality of the killer rather than the innocence or guilt of the killed. Because the film is told at a cold, behaviorist distance from the inner lives of its characters, the film is more cerebral than emotional. For me, though, it's still very much a visceral film because of the cinematography and gripping killing sequences. It is probably for the best that the film is not emotional as the subject matter and the emotions would probably interact to produce Hollywood melodrama.