- Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life (Director: Werner Herzog Germany/ Canada 2011) Screening at Vancity Theatre March 16 and 17.
Rating: 8 (out of 10)
WERNER Herzog has spent his entire career contextualizing chaos.
In both his fiction work and documentary projects the German-born, L.A.-based filmmaker zeroes in on extreme conditions looking for story lines to explore with his camera.
One of his greatest achievements, 1972's Aguirre, the Wrath of God, follows 16th-century Spanish conquistadors down the Amazon River as they search for El Dorado, the legendary City of Gold. The story was based loosely on actual historical material which Herzog extrapolated into a delirious Wagnerian epic. He shot the film in chronological order in a Peruvian rainforest with the cast and crew travelling down river by rafts as the production progressed.
There is only a very thin line between reality and the super-reality we experience in Herzog's cinéma vérité world. His camera never blinks.
Into the Abyss, Herzog's latest feature-length film, is a co-production made in partnership with the Investigation Discovery cable channel. He originally intended to make a film on death row inmates and capital punishment but narrowed it down to one case in Texas. Two men were charged with killing three people so they could steal a red Camaro. One of the men, Michael Perry, was sentenced to death while the other, Jason Burkett, was given life in prison.
The film crew had access to both inmates, their families, the victims' families and other people who were involved in the story, including police and prison officials, as well as police footage from crime scenes involved in the murders.
Herzog does the interviews himself in a thick German accent. Even though the filmmaker is personally against capital punishment he makes no judgement on what unfolds and lets everyone have their say, including Perry eight days before he was executed on July 1, 2010, in Huntsville, Texas.
In some ways, Into the Abyss, as a true crime narrative is similar to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but Herzog's deadpan approach also falls in line with everything else he has done. A surreal tale told by a master craftsman.
