{"id":13494,"date":"2011-11-17T02:05:07","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T02:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=13494"},"modified":"2011-11-17T18:53:33","modified_gmt":"2011-11-17T18:53:33","slug":"into-the-abyss-a-tale-of-death-a-tale-of-life-werner-herzog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/11\/17\/into-the-abyss-a-tale-of-death-a-tale-of-life-werner-herzog\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the Abyss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A powerful exploration of the death penalty sees Werner Herzog probe deep into the horrors of killings in Texas.<\/p>\n

There is a moment in Herzog’s latest film where he tells a young man that “I don’t have to like you”.<\/p>\n

You soon realise why.<\/p>\n

The man he’s speaking to is Michael Perry<\/a>, who is on death row after being convicted, along with an accomplice, of murdering three people in October 2001.<\/p>\n

Viewers might be conditioned to think that a film about the death penalty made by someone who opposes it (as Herzog does) might be an issue film.<\/p>\n

After all, Errol Morris<\/a> famously got an innocent man off death row<\/a> with his 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But we quickly realise this isn’t an issue film about the death penalty and instead a long hard look at death itself, as seen through the ripple effects of a murder.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In a similar way to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood<\/a> it provides an examination of evil in the heartland of America.<\/p>\n

Perry was convicted, along with Jason Burkett, of brutally killing three people in Conroe, Texas<\/a>: a 50 year old nurse, her teenage son and his friend.<\/p>\n

Herzog’s conversation with Perry is one of several: he also speaks to Burkett, the families of the prisoners and victims, as well as various people connected with the business of death, including a retired executioner and pastor.<\/p>\n

Whilst it doesn’t come to any firm conclusion as to Perry’s guilt – he protests his innocence throughout – it seems likely he was guilty.<\/p>\n

But the film is not an exploration of who did what and instead opts to probe around the question of why people kill and condone killing.<\/p>\n

The shallow reason Perry and Burkett murdered was to steal a car for a joyride, whilst Texas as a state seems to have a pathological addiction to killing its prisoners<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since the resumption the death penalty in 1976 (after four years when it was suspended) Texas has executed nearly four times as many inmates<\/a> as its closest rival, Virginia.<\/p>\n

But Herzog isn’t singling out the Lone Star state – the disturbing details of the murder case are constantly in the air and some of the people not directly connected with the case have an impressive moral dignity.<\/p>\n

There is the retired executioner who forgoes his pension because he is tired with legally killing people, whilst a pastor manages to give an unexpectedly profound answer to Herzog’s\u00a0curve ball\u00a0question about a squirrel.<\/p>\n

As usual the small quirks of human behaviour are picked up on although this is a much more sober film than Herzog\u2019s recent work and at time Mark Degli Antoni’s sparse score gives it an appropriately sombre tone.<\/p>\n

Herzog is a past master at eliciting revealing answers by asking deceptively straightforward questions.<\/p>\n

One of the most startling dialogues here is with an articulate woman who became attracted to and pregnant by Burkett.<\/p>\n