Dekalog: Five
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| Directed by | Krzysztof Kieślowski |
| Produced by | Ryszard Chutkovski |
| Written by | Krzysztof Kieślowski Krzysztof Piesiewicz |
| Starring | Miroslaw Baka Jan Tesarz Krzysztof Globisz |
| Music by | Zbigniew Preisner |
| Cinematography | Slawomir Idziak |
| Edited by | Ewa Smal |
| Distributed by | Polish Television |
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Release date
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Running time
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57 minutes |
| Country | Poland |
| Language | Polish |
| Budget | $10,000 |
Dekalog: Five (Polish: Dekalog, pięć) is the fifth part of the television series Dekalog by Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski, connected to the sixth imperative of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not murder".
A brutal and seemingly motiveless murder brings together a young drifter, Jacek (Mirosław Baka), a taxi driver (Jan Tesarz), and an idealistic lawyer, Piotr (Krzysztof Globisz). This is the only one of the films with an explicit political stance, reflecting Kieślowski's opposition to the death penalty. An expanded 84-minute cinema version of this episode was released as Krótki film o zabijaniu (A Short Film About Killing).
Along with Dekalog: Six, the film selected for screening as part of the Cannes Classics section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
The film begins with Piotr Balicki (Krzysztof Globisz), a young and idealistic lawyer who is about to take the bar exam. Jacek Łazar (Mirosław Baka) is a 20-year-old man, coming from the countryside. He wanders the streets of Warsaw and has apparently nothing to do. He keeps asking about a taxi stand but the first one he finds is very busy. Waldemar Rekowski (Jan Tesarz), a middle-aged taxicab driver, overweight, cruel-looking, lives in the Dekalog apartment block. He enjoys the freedom of his profession, with a wage and the power to ignore people whom he does not want to take in his taxi, as well as ogling young ladies.
Jacek plays malicious, pointless, and ruthless jokes on people like throwing a stranger into the urinals in a public toilet, dropping stones from a bridge onto passing vehicles, or shooing pigeons which an old woman wants to feed. He has a photograph of a little girl blown up and then goes to a cafe. The taxi driver wanders around the city looking for a client. Jacek keeps a length of rope in his bag and a stick; he wraps a bit of rope around his hand but stops when he spots two girls playing at the other side of the window at the cafe and he engages in a game with them. He then goes to a taxi stop and jumps into a taxi, mendaciously declining to cede his taxi to other people who seem much busier. The taxi driver happens to be Waldemar Rekowski. Jacek asks to be driven to a part of the city near the countryside. There, Jacek kills the driver using the rope, in a brutal and extended scene in which he has to finish his killing using a big stone as Rekowski begs for mercy. He then takes the taxi to the river and dumps the body. Jacek starts eating a sandwich made by taxi driver's wife. At the same time, he turns on the radio and hears a children's song about a young lion learning to be brave. Upset, Jacek rips the car radio from the dashboard and casts it in the river.
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