Decalogue 5 - Andrew Berglund

This is my favorite of the Kieslowski films so far. Like Kip said, it is rare to watch a film that is so profoundly moving and shocking that it grips you for several days after.

With this blog, I don't want to talk so much about the film itself, but rather the discussion on capital punishment that sprung up at the end (which easily could have extended on for a much longer period of time).

I find it extremely disturbing that anyone can identify themselves with the Christian tradition and still delude their mind into thinking that the death penalty is an effective or desirable aspect of public policy. Through the many debates/discussions I've had on this topic, no one has successful articulated a way to make these two positions coincide.

Maybe this is easier to work through using examples. I think that there are really three kinds of murders that give people a hard time: "the Raskolnikov", "the gangbanger", and "the pleasure-killer" (for the sake of time I won't go into all of this) . Sure, we could debate about the Stalins, Hitlers, and "killers who wipe out hundreds of millions of people at a time", but debates like these need to be brought down to a real level because there are far two many factors to consider with those examples. Here I will investigate one of those three examples to see if we can shed some light on this character. (I make no claims of partiality, my feelings are readily apparent).

1. "The Raskolnikov" -
This is where we would most likely place our young Polish friend. I should probably say that Raskolnikov is the name of the student in Crime and Punishment who murders an old woman. Like the young man in Decalogue 5 there is a lot of ambiguity about Raskolnikov’s motivation for killing the woman. In one passage he gives something of an explanation: “Yes, that's what it was! I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I killed her.... Do you understand now?”. So, do you? Unless you’ve read the book probably not, and even those of us who have read it struggle.

One way to understand Raskolnikov’s statement is through Nietzche’s teaching of the “Ubermensch”, or Superman. Nietzche believed that man’s natural state should be overcome by an exceptional individual. In the same way, Raskolnikov wanted to overcome man’s natural feelings and impulses by committing cold-blooded murder. To him this act was a way of escaping his low state in order to become something great. Obviously, this is a pretty crude simplification, but hopefully it get the point across.

I think that Kieslowski’s killer is a similar kind of individual. We can talk a great deal about his past; the death of his sister and his subsequent escape from home are clearly major moments in his life. Or as Kip said, we could analyze his destructive behavior as a kind of “death wish”. But no matter what it seems that he was seeking some kind of escape, and he thought that by committing murder he could somehow achieve that end. Perhaps he just felt a compulsion to do something dramatic and irrevocable. He is a young man who despises his past and feels no future worth living for. Rather than becoming suicidal or depressed, he responds to his circumstances in anger.

Maybe I will leave the argument for his death up to those who buy into it.

I believe that the state’s decision to murder him is just a way for them to wash their hands of responsibility. Perhaps they will hide behind the grief of the victims family and then say that justice gave the murderer what he deserved. But where does this notion of deserving come from? What do we really deserve? Perhaps what this young man deserves is forgiveness from the death of his sister and a chance to begin a new life. From a Judeo-Christian perspective it is completely absurd to take about deserving in this way. The entire purpose of Christ is to give people that which they do not deserve (in the sense that they gain eternal life by allowing him to shoulder their guilt).

Another common argument is that a lot of people go through terrible things and don’t “go out and murder people”. This is clearly a true statement, but can any of us say much of anything about the private intellectual life of another human being? Similar external experiences are interpreted in vastly different ways, and we may not even start from the same level of rationality (argument of Kant). I think this analogy is just a complete misrepresentation of what humans are.

Finally, there is always the question of revenge. In general we give very little thought to criminals. The idea is that they gave up their rights by choosing to commit a crime; therefore, they should not be given the consideration appropriated to other, more “civilized”, people. Revenge is built upon hate, not the love that one has/had for the victim. I believe that when we act so as to fulfill our own hate we lose far more than we gain. I think a society built on forgiveness will not only go farther in healing people like this murdering young man, but also victims and their loved ones. Maybe this sounds wishy-washy, but I have some pretty relevant experience to back it up.

I’ve probably rattled on long enough