Into the Abyss

German filmmaker Werner Herzog has become almost as famous for his provocative documentaries (such as Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams) as for his visionary fiction films like Aguirre: The Wrath of God. In Into the Abyss, Herzog focuses on the death penalty in America, serving up a profile of the human beings on both sides of a verdict in Texas through interviews with the killer, survivors, officials, and others. Death row inmate Michael Perry, convicted of triple homicide in the course of a car theft with another perpetrator, is clearly no innocent man. Herzog clinically lays out the senseless brutality of the murders, drawing on crime scene video and a police detective's commentary to reconstruct events (but showing no violence or dead bodies onscreen). At the same time, we also see a field of graves with markers (numbers only, no names on the executed criminals' crosses) and listen to the remembrances of a prison pastor and a former state executioner. The documentary also serves up a devastating portrait of the culture of crime, drug and alcohol abuse, and broken families that Perry and his companions grew up in. "I don't believe human beings should be executed," Herzog says early on, but he doesn't preach or make political arguments—merely asking that the audience engage with the people involved here (including Perry himself, interviewed eight days before his execution) and ask their own questions. A moving and thoughtful film about a hot-button topic from a director who doesn't shy away from hard questions, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)