In the opening scene of Into the Abyss, an imposing and heartfelt investigation of how a young man came to be legally executed by the state, Werner Herzog asks multiple questions of the Reverend Richard Lopez, a death row chaplain who literally holds onto inmates as they’re expiring from a lethal injection. One of the questions the German filmmaker asks the man of faith is, 'Why does God allow capital punishment?" He also says, 'Please describe an encounter with a squirrel." It is to Herzog’s estimable credit that each remark draws an answer of equal worth.
virtually nothing is extraneous in this documentary
It’s also indicative of how virtually nothing is extraneous in this documentary. One of the reasons Herzog is revered as a documentary director is that his indelible mark includes a wry, perceptive sense of humour and an alertness that picks up on the unexpected. In the past that’s made for diversions, sometimes telling and sometimes merely eccentric, but his recent works have a gravitas and focus that wasn’t as notable in a work such as 1977’s La Soufriere. Herzog digs deeper now, and in the same way that the elemental acts of creation from 2010’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams sharpened his focus, the tragedy of Into the Abyss levels his gaze.
The embrace of the death penalty in multiple American states, as both a deterrent and a Biblical act of revenge, obviously fascinates Herzog, himself a Californian resident, who has now made multiple works across the issue. 'I think human beings should not be executed," he says early on, but this is not an obvious work of partisanship. Instead, in beginning with a triple murder in the Texan town of Conroe in 2001, Herzog traces out the spiraling effect of the crime and elements that coalesced to create the circumstances. He looks both backwards and forwards, with the triple homicide as a nexus point where failings reached a critical mass.
'Paradise awaits," declares Michael Perry, a death row inmate for the three killings who Herzog interviewed eight days prior to his execution. Perry’s subsequent faith leaves him calm, while Jason Burkett, his accomplice in what were senseless, brutal crimes, is literally imprisoned by a 40-year sentence he received at the age of 19. Herzog magisterially cuts between jailhouse interviews and artless police evidence footage of crime scenes, engaging with family members who want satisfaction but doubt they’ll find it, even if they witness Perry’s execution, and talks to Burkett’s repentant father, Delbert, who is also imprisoned for 40 years.
The camera moves steadily down the death row hallway, where the faded room at the end of the corridor looms with the threat of death and the only new item is a large digital clock to make clear the exactness of time. Fred Allen, a former death house captain and pro-capital punishment proponent talks of his breakdown, when he realised he could no longer work there, but even in the midst of death Herzog finds moments of rebirth, some unexpected and some just inexplicable. The car that Perry and Burkett initially planned to steal is still impounded, with a tree literally growing threw it, while Burkett has married a pen pal who believes Perry did the killings and is now pregnant – through 'contraband" – with his child.
Life and death intermingle through Into the Abyss, and their closeness is noted by contemporaries of the men who just avoided the same fateful path. Herzog is a humanist, and this documentary may just be a defining work.
