Daniel Gordon - Dekalog 6

My stomach turned several times as we watched Dekalog 6; “Thou shalt not murder.” I could see the twisted actions of the main character in my own life, not necessarily physically manifest, but in thought life at least. The Bible makes the point that all sin separates us from God equally; no one is worse than another. The film demonstrates this clearly, as the taxi driver who gets killed is just as guilty as the boy who kills him. All characters had their downfalls, such as murder, or perversion, and all had their redeeming points, such as the murderer’s affection for children and the cab driver’s feeding of the stray dog. Kieslowski does an excellent job of providing the viewer with a text to question in Dekalog 6. He challenges perceptions of sin, and our notion that we are somehow better than others, because our sin is less. He shows in a very graphic sense that all sin is equal and deserves equal punishment. The boy who is a murder dies by strangulation with a rope around his neck. The cab driver who is, at the worst we see, a pervert is killed in the exact same way by that very boy.
This can’t be ignored when watching the film. Each death presents the audience with too powerful an image to be ignored or forgotten. The man at the urinals and the friendly road worker appear in situations that attempt to shed light into the boy’s life and give him time to change his mind before the murder is completed. Both times, however, he ignores the character intended to represent Christ’s influence; throwing him into the urinal and urging the cab driver past him. We so often do this. God sets in our path opportunities to examine our actions and stop ourselves before we do something irreversible, and so often we tragically ignore them, brushing God aside, and heading toward the death we have chosen instead of the salvation He has offered.