Blogical Conclusion

ANATOMY OF A MURDERER

JUL 4, 2009 – JACEK LAZAR (MIROSLAW BAKA) WALKS INTO a cinema hall. He looks at a film’s poster and asks the woman at the ticket counter, “Is it a good film?” She’s busy doing her hair. Without glancing at Jacek, she mumbles, “No, it’s boring.” He looks at the poster again and asks the woman, “What’s it about?” She replies, “Love… but it’s still boring.” She turns to him. “Anyway, it’s not on now. There’s a meeting here.” He asks, then, what she is doing, and she replies that she’s pulling out grey hairs. He asks where the nearest taxi stand is, and she points him to Castle Square. As Jacek walks away, it’s the end of this vignette, one of a series of desultory vignettes that establish his aimlessness. He doesn’t seem to have anywhere to go, anyone to talk to, anything to do.

Therefore, when he hops into a taxi and kills its driver, Waldemar (Jan Tesarz), it appears to be as cold-blooded a killing as a killing can get – a perverse act driven by no motive other than offering Jacek something to do. He killed a man in order to kill some time – it’s just the latest vignette in Jacek’s life. Our sympathies, therefore, are entirely with the victim of the ghastly crime that’s depicted in gruesome detail, right from the instant Jacek slips a rope around Waldemar’s throat to the final moments where, dismayed that his efforts have failed to completely extinguish life, he smashes Waldemar’s skull in with a heavy stone. The film succeeds in making us feel that Waldemar didn’t deserve to die, but Jacek certainly does – and subsequently, we let slip a sigh of satisfaction when a court sentences Jacek to death by hanging.

But gradually, our vindication is tempered with misgivings through a plot contrivance that appears, at first, geared towards fleshing out that oldest of sentimental clichés – the humanising of an inhuman – but which, eventually, is interested in something else altogether: it wants to turn the tables on the identities of murderer and victim. Jacek asks to see his lawyer, Piotr Balicki (Krzysztof Globisz), who is shown into the small cell. “You wanted to see me?” Piotr asks, and Jacek replies, “Have you seen my mother?” He wants to know if she was crying, if she was asking about him at all. “She just cried,” Piotr remembers, getting increasingly uncomfortable with this line of conversation. Perhaps he’s beginning to realise, like us, that Jacek is just a boy, a sad-faced boy with just a few hours left to live.

Jacek asks, “Would you see my mother again?” Piotr replies, “Afterwards.” Jacek nods. “Of course. I thought so, because you called me from the window when they took me from court. You called my name.” Piotr says, “I wanted to…” He pauses, unsure. “I don’t know what I wanted.” Jacek continues, “I’m almost twenty-one. But when you called me, my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t listen in court, not until you called to me. They were all… all against me.” Piotr argues gently, “Against what you did.” Jacek shrugs. “Same thing.” He bows his head, secure in the knowledge that whether they were against him or his action, nothing will change the reality that he’ll be dead in a few hours. Piotr reminds Jacek, “You want me to see your mother.”

Jacek raises his head and makes a halting request. “Yes, tell her I want to be buried in my father’s grave.” Suddenly, he’s stricken with doubt. “Will it be possible for me to be buried in the cemetery? That’s what the priest said.” Piotr nods. Jacek continues. “In my father’s grave there’s one more place for my mother. I’d like you to ask her to give it to me. Yes, there were three places. Marysia and father are there and one place is left. Marysia is there. Five years now. Yes, five years ago she was run over by a tractor, back at home. She was still at school. She was twelve. The school year had just begun. The driver of that tractor, he was my pal. We’d been drinking vodka and wine before it happened. Then he went and ran over her in the meadow by the forest.”

“There was a meadow there, by the forest. I always kept thinking that if only she was alive, I wouldn’t have left the village. She was my sister. Three brothers, but she was the only sister. I was her favourite. She was my favourite, too. Perhaps everything would have been different. But afterwards I had to go away, join a labour brigade. I didn’t want to leave. Perhaps it wouldn’t have come to this? Perhaps I wouldn’t be here now? We bought the grave plot because Marysia loved the trees, she loved greenery.” The prison guard interrupts this reverie. “The Prosecutor requests that the conversation be terminated.” Piotr rises, as does Jacek. Suddenly he remembers something and turns to Piotr. “Amongst my belongings there is a receipt from a photographer’s. I asked for an enlargement, but I hadn’t time to collect it. Afterwards, I‘d like mother to have it.”

“What sort of photograph?” Piotr asks. Jacek replies, “First Communion. I took it from mother when I left home.” But the insistence of the guard, who’s now brought in reinforcements, leaves no time to continue. “Please…” Jacek calls out, struggling against the men marching him to his death. “I won’t…” And just like that the tables are turned. Now that Jacek’s earlier aimlessness has been explained away as the aftermath of a poignant and pointless death, we’re no longer sure that the murder was as cold-blooded as it then seemed, and we’re not certain that Jacek deserves to die. He deserves to be punished, yes. But now that he’s the victim and the State is the murderer, our sympathies have shifted. They now lie with this sad 21-year-old who just wants to be buried in the family plot, next to the little sister whose death has somehow led to his own.

Krótki Film o Zabijaniu (1988, Polish; aka A Short Film About Killing). Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Starring Miroslaw Baka, Krzysztof Globisz, Jan Tesarz.

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