A Short Film About Killing (1988)

Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski, a Polish director, the movie tracks the lives of three people and how their lives become entangled through a murder. I may have simply been unaware in other films, but the obvious use of filters in this film added a nice surreal effect. It felt like everything I was watching was unclear or indirect, suggesting a less precise interpretation of the events portrayed. It also added nice tension to the movie and asked me to pay closer attention as events unfolded.

As the lives of the three main characters, all of them unlikeable, converge, the karmic implications of their actions seem to return to them. Each character was forced to face the irony of their individual predicaments. In what came across as a criticism of capital punishment, it was difficult to see who was without fault. The movie showed that, perhaps, all people who condemned someone to die are, in part, responsible for the death. Ultimately, a quite enjoyable movie which presented the viewer with the raw materials to make a decision, but didn't provide the answer.