Post #3: What I Cannot Leave

There is a moment in A Short Film About Killing when the executioner places the noose around a man’s neck, adjusts it, and steps back.
Krzysztof Kieślowski holds the shot.
The cut does not come.
I remain.
I cannot leave.

Each step is carried out.
Nothing interrupts.
There is no one else to take this in.
If I look away, it continues without me.
I am already part of it.

I want the film to spare me the weight of what is happening.
It refuses.
The scene does not argue.
It stays.

The state’s killing receives the same attention, the same patience, as the earlier murder.
No hierarchy of cruelty appears.
Comfort is withheld entirely.

What becomes difficult is remaining.
The film does not ask me to agree.
It asks me to endure.

This refusal is present from the beginning.
A dead rat.
A cat hanging by a noose.
A shrunken head reflected in a rearview mirror.
Mud.
Clouds.
Stillness.
No explanation.
No one yet.

The images arrive without context.
I don’t know where to place them.
Something has already happened.
Or is about to.
I register consequence before cause.
I am already being prepared for what I cannot yet see.

The world does not open.
It closes in.
Warsaw appears in fragments.
Empty lots.
Mud.
Gray light filtered through green and yellow tones.
People move without urgency or connection.

The frame narrows.
Edges darken.
Space feels compressed.
Warmth drains from the image before anything has occurred.
The city feels already decided.
What feels possible is already narrowed.
Nothing breaks.
It continues.

Then the violence is carried out without release.
Jacek kills a taxi driver.
The driver resists.
He pleads.
The body refuses to die.

The frame tightens.
Doors, seats, bodies press inward.
There is no distance to step back into.

The body does not yield.
It has to be taken.
I cannot decide.
I am not above it.
I am inside it.
There is no position outside it.

Cruelty is not observed.
It is endured.
No one intervenes.
No one names it.
If I leave, it becomes easier than it is.
I have to see how long it takes.

I take this as the limit.
I expect what follows to answer it.
To make it mean something.

Instead, it returns.
Jacek is executed by the state.
The body is prepared.
The noose is placed.
Each step is carried out without urgency.

At first the frame is obstructed.
Bars interrupt the view.
Then they recede.

Nothing is withheld.
Nothing is shortened.
It is the same act.
Authority does not change it.
It reorganizes it.

There is no distance left between them.
If I separate them, I make one of them acceptable.
I cannot choose.

I expect something to shift.
It doesn’t.

Only then does he speak.
Jacek speaks.
His body trembles.
The barriers fall away.
Fear becomes visible.

It feels wrong to see him now.

His voice is allowed to remain.
Then silence.

It arrives too late.
I begin to recognize him only after nothing can be undone.
It changes nothing.
It binds me to it.

Nothing resolves.

I wait for it to.
It stays.

I stay longer than I should.
It goes past where I can bear to look.
It goes past the point where looking feels voluntary.

I cannot leave.
I don’t know why.
It stays.
The sound continues.
The body remains.
Nothing intervenes.

Something has been crossed.
It cannot be undone.

The body remains.

I don’t know what this endurance does.
Whether it holds something.
Or absorbs it.

I cannot leave.