Conversations with death row inmate Michael Perry and those affected by his crime serve as an examination of why people - and the state - kill.
My only reservation is that it feels like the film could go deeper, as Herzog's occasional struggle to find a focus for his story takes its toll, but that quibble aside, it's yet another intriguing and surprising film from this ever-fascinating documentarian.
Although Herzog himself is staunchly opposed to capital punishment, his new documentary is much more than a righteous polemic against the state executing its citizens.
Herzog’s tapestry testifies to life’s light from death’s darkness. Its honest humanity and sideways-on character bare his illuminating imprint.
What we’re left with is a community struggling to come to terms with the emotional toll of the crimes, and a documentary which feels a little overwhelmed.
Werner Herzog has proved himself to be the most elegant and surprising of documentary makers. So it is with his latest film, the quietly brilliant Into the Abyss, which takes the well-explored subject of capital punishment and makes it riveting.
If this capital punishment documentary does nothing else (though it does plenty) in its 107 minutes of hypnotic inquisition, it shows how even the worst murderers, once allowed to talk, become, in stray and tiny moments, sympathetic.
Death often becomes German filmmaker Werner Herzog, but sadly not in Into the Abyss.
Consequently, it is a film full of despair, but it’s also compelling, and Herzog’s interview with a death-row groupie towards the end of the film provides a horribly grim punchline.
Moving and thought-provoking in equal measure. A Herzog doc of the highest order.
It's a decent film, though I felt that a clearer, sharper light could have been cast on the defendants themselves.
Into the Abyss has no argumentative thrust, no purpose other than – here's some chaotic and violent lives I discovered, make of them what you will.
There is a forensic thoroughness and fairness to his approach that results in a powerful, poignant film.
Dr Johnson said that when a man knows he's about to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully. You could say the same about watching a film about a man waiting to be hanged.
An eloquent open-ended meditation on crime and punishment.
[Herzog] brings forward and obscures the advantages of capital punishment but largely uses it to express his own opinion on the matter. In that sense, he uses his film to fulfil his own needs but ultimately seems less concerned with his audience.
Herzog to give Q&A session after screening
Werner Herzog
Cameo, Edinburgh from Friday April 6, 2012, until Thursday April 12, 2012. More info: http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/
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