HRW Film Festival 2012 – Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life.

Into the Abyss: a Tale of Death, a Tale of Life, is the latest work from filmmaker Werner Herzog known for his unique style and subjects. This film focuses on two people: Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, who were involved in a triple homicide in October 2001. Both individuals were convicted in Texas of capital murder, Burkett was sentenced to life in prison while Perry was sentenced to death. At the begining Herzog says to Perry: “I do not have to like you… but I respect you and you are a human being, and I do not believe that human beings should be executed.” This message remains throughout the documentary. Michael Perry was executed on July 9th 2010 in Texas death house penitentiary, eight days after Herzog’s interview.

The film is split into chapters allowing for a mix of people and themes to be considered and really focuses on the disquieting nature of the the crime committed. The film uses police footage and a host of interviews with family and friends of all the victims of the crime, Sandra Stotler, Adam Stotler and Jeremy Richardson and also includes dialogue with people surrounding Jason Burkett and Michael Perry. These interviews provide a mixture of outcomes, including some being deeply sad as with Sandra Stotlers daughter, to others that discover remarkable stories. These are intertwined with police footage and reports that take the audience through the senseless nature of the crime and how three people lost their lives essentially for a red convertible car. Herzog explores the horror that the men created and the lives that brought them there.  Perry and Burkitt blame the other for the murders and appeal their innocence, but Herzog never sides with either man’s appeal to innocence.

The film is bookended with interviews from people involved in the use of capital punishment in Texas. An interview with a prison chaplain begins the film. Herzog interview technique creates some real emotion with this man, he does this by asking: “tell me about an encounter with a squirrel?”. This interview is set a distinctly haunting place, a graveyard consisting of deceased convicts, where the headstones have only numbers rather than names.

Towards the end of the film there is an interview with Fred Allen, a former captain of a tie down team who personifies the immorality of the death penalty. Fred Allen helped conduct over one hundred and twenty executions by lethal injection throughout his career. After a particular execution involving a woman, he had a nervous breakdown and could not continue his work. He did not perform another execution and had to give up his pension. The interview highlights how principled this man was to the law of his country but due to a purity of feeling on the subject of capital punishment he had to oppose it, despite it being legal. Werner Herzog has described this man has a “national treasure” and in the Q&A after the film told of his love for him and that he was one of the strongest arguments of the inhumanity of capital punishment.

Herzog’s film is not a traditional documentary, but rather attempts to give something more. He is well known for combining narrative into his interviews in order to create something “less factual, but more truthful”. This film does truly look into the abyss it is trying to view and injects the audience with the feeling that intrinsically capital punishment should not be used even for the most abhorrent actions. With the death penalty remaining such a difficult problem, such a creative expression of the issue could give rise to more opposition to this human rights abuse. The film avoids using any other argument other than to show the beauty and sacredness of life and the repellency of an attempt to destroy it. The film coincides with four other documentaries profiling other people on death row which are now being broadcast on television. The film was premiered in London online with the HRW, and you can watch the trailer below: