Werner Herzog is a director of films. And he has directed a great many terrific films, including Rescue Dawn, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, and Fitzcarraldo.
In my view, his best and most powerful films are his documentaries, including “Grizzly Man, and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”. I just watched his documentary titled “Into the Abyss“. Bottom line: watch it.
This documentary argues against the death penalty. Yet it focuses intensely on the families of murder victims. He documents the damage to the victims’ families, but also documents the damage done to relatives of murderers and those charged with carrying out the death penalty. This is the most balanced view of the death penalty I have ever seen.
From the review in the New York Times, by A.O. Scott:
The paradox of this film is that it is both unremittingly bleak and rigorously humane. Mr. Herzog, interviewing killers, survivors, witnesses and officials in law enforcement and corrections, is polite even when asking uncomfortable questions, and the seriousness of his intentions allows humor and absurdity to bubble up amid all the pain. He never appears on camera, but his unmistakable voice — dry, precise, carrying the accent of his native Bavaria — ties together this tapestry of conflicting testimony, inchoate emotion and unredeemed ugliness.
In its alternation of talking-head interviews and archival video clips, “Into the Abyss” superficially resembles the kind of titillating, moralizing true-crime shockumentary that is a staple of off-hours cable television. But the grim ordinariness of the narrative makes its Dostoyevskian dimensions all the more arresting.
… Mr. Herzog is not interested in vindicating any particular point of view or version of events. Nor, despite his clearly stated moral opposition to capital punishment, is he advocating a political position. He is instead — as he so often has, in fictional features and documentaries alike — probing the contradictions of the human heart, in which nobility and savagery are so entwined as to be almost indistinguishable.
It is moving throughout and you really should take the time to view the movie. It is available via Netflix streaming.
