Friday, March 28, 2008

Dekalog Response

The short film provides an interesting view of the two opposite spectrums of the law with one character taking an examination to become an attorney and enforce the law, while the other character commits a murder. The film seems to point to the difference, or lack of difference, between murder and the death penalty. A quote at the beginning of movie says, "Law should not imitate nature, but rather improve it." As an advocate of the death penalty, this quote made me think, especially after watching the movie. Jacek brutally murdered a taxi driver by strangling, beating, and eventually bashing his head in with a stone. Though I absolutely do not advocate murder, an apparent question on my mind asked how executing a prisoner helped to improve nature? The fact is executing somebody does not improve nature it only extinguishes one bad person or one person's mistakes. From the eyes of the attorney, he must have been asking himself a similar question. He had gone to school and taken a strenuous exam to practice law, and the law that he supports kills people. While short, the film was quite provocative and stirs some emotions that could lead to an interesting debate about the death penalty. Perhaps this film is made to make us think what connotations are linked to murder, and what connotations are connected to law-based execution, because in the end do they not function the same way?

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