A Short Film About Killing

I thought this was a very powerful and haunting film. At first, I didn't expect the main character, the murderer, to actually be a killer. He just seemed like an awkward man without any direction. I still don't understand his motivation for killing the taxi driver. I thought it was interesting too how the director set up the character of the taxi driver. Through the driver's actions early in the film, I almost expected him to the killer in the upcoming scenes because of his questionable actions, disregard for others (by driving away when someone needed a taxi), and his gazing at the woman. The embedded scenes with the lawyer in his examination/meeting I believe were effective by setting up another "murder" that was to take place: the execution. The lawyer is clearly torn with the idea of capital punishment. The execution itself was as intense and gruesome as the murder of the taxi driver. The execution chambers were dark and dirty, and all of the guards showed no signs of hesitation or remorse before, during, or after the prisoner was murdered. This could be attributed to how capital punishment was carried out at that time in Poland, but I thought it was interesting how the murderer carried out his act with the same material he was killed with: rope. This could be a statement by the filmmakers about how policymakers draw the very fine line between what is murder, as capital punishment pushes the very edge of that line.