Murder by the State

Understandably, Polish officials are very upset with the cruel treatment Robert Dziekanski received at the hands of four police thugs. As the Clash says, murder is crime unless it was done by a policeman. It sort of got me to thinking about a Polish film that more people outside of Eastern Europe really out to know. Released in 1988, The Decalogue a ten-part series that meditates on the transgressions listed in the ten commandments. I recommend the whole thing, but here is the last bit of the fifth short, the one that concerns murder. This scene depicts the execution of a deranged murderer by an authoritarian state, not the electrical lynching of an upset and confused man lost in an airport where no one spoke his language in a supposedly free society.