Monday, March 31, 2008

A Short Film About Killing

The movie that we watched in class on Friday seemed to get everyone into a quiet yet sad state of mind not usual for a Friday afternoon. It was a very deep movie that followed the murder of a taxi cab driver by a young man that has had a hard life. The movie was artistically portrayed that you felt more sympathy for the murderer than you do for the one killed, which the director probably wanted since it seemed that his argument is against capital punishment.

The movie portrays the taxi cab driver in many instances, to put it bluntly, a bastard. He doesn't do his job well and goes out of his way to make people miserable. This is what makes people not feel much sympathy towards him when he was killed. He was a mean person that didn't contribute much to society, even though he does mention he has a wife. The question is, did he deserve to die? Of course he didn't.

On the other hand the murderer throughout the entire movie looks like an innocent young man that would never hurt a fly. He cares about his family, is somewhat talkative with strangers, and even plays around with two little girls who are watching him eat in a cafe. Although the viewers somewhat know in the back of their minds what will eventually commence, they don't view him as a murderer until he actually is in the vicious act of killing the taxi cab driver. He eventually is sentenced to death, and the movie ends with him being executed. Once again, the question is, does he deserve to die?

This question is harder to answer and will have many different opinions. We often tend not to think of murderers as human beings, and honestly it is hard to do so once we hear of the heinous crimes they commit. However, the director, gets us to feel bad for the murderer, because we see him cry, we see his love for his sister, we see all the struggles that he has faced. The director used a powerful tool in arguing against the death penalty tugging at our hearts and gaining our sympathy for the man we should be despising. However we must not forget that he did what he did, and no matter how sympathetic something seems, murder is still murder. The director makes a good argument against the death penalty, one of the best that I have seen. However, the man is still a killer.

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