Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.Throughout his storied career, filmmaker Werner Herzog has explored two main themes, sometimes simultaneously: man vs. nature, and man vs. his own nature. From early masterworks like Aguirre: Wrath of God to later efforts like the documentary Grizzly Man, the famed German director has uncovered the complexities of the human spirit while discovering the depths/heights to which ordinary people will strive to do extraordinary things. In his latest true life film, Into the Abyss, Herzog discusses a celebrated case in Conroe, Texas. Two young men, out joyriding and looking for cars to steal, ended up killing three innocent people. After a shootout and a series of confessions, the duo were sentenced -- Jason Burkett received 40 years to life, while Michael Perry was given death.
Herzog hates capital punishment. It represents, to him, the worst of society and civilization. With that in mind, he's not out to uncover the truth or turn his interviews into a Paradise Lost style expose. Instead, Into the Abyss wants to illustrate how ordinary individuals end up facing four decades of incarceration, and how the horrific crimes committed impact everyone -- both the felons' and victims' families. In his low and considered way, he offers a series of sit downs, asking questions both obvious ("Are you afraid to die?") and unusual ("Tell us about your hands"). By refusing to approach the material from an investigative stance, Herzog uncovers a deeper, more convicted reality, one few would expect from such a story.
Setting things up in five sections (including a Prologue and Epilogue) and talking to everyone from the prison priest to an ex-Death Row execution coordinator, Herzog spells out the futility in such state-sponsored 'murder'. Perry, after admitting everything -- and even going so far as to show police where the final two bodies could be found -- became a Born-Again denier, unable to admit what he so freely acknowledged earlier. Burkett is more of a mystery. He's married to a woman who helps support his appeal and states emphatically that he was merely a victim of a misguided friendship and assorted circumstances. The only rebuttal comes from the police, a sheriff walking us specifically through the kind of facts that are almost impossible to rebut.Instead, Into the Abyss becomes a passive advocate for a more refined form of justice. Burkett's Dad apologizes profusely, making it very clear that his rotten parenting resulted in his son's current situation. Perry is also painted as misunderstood and misguided, though a few insinuations about his actual situation at home throw that conclusion into question. We get police crime scene footage (no gore, thankfully) and one of the more moving scenes centers on a prisoners' cemetery, where simple cross headstones are engraved with numbers, not names. When we learn it is for inmates whose families have disowned them, the message really hits home. As he has done so many times before, Herzog shows that our own frailty as people plague us in ways that lead to questionable, even condemnable acts.
With its languid pace and subtle style, Into the Abyss is unlike any documentary you've ever seen, especially on such an incendiary subject. Herzog never defends the boys' actions. Instead, he argues the classic "two wrongs don't make a right" in his own eccentric way. Naturally, the question of capital punishment is much more complicated than the director's strict approach, and this film also finds those always tricky gray areas. But then the senselessness of both the offense and the response remind us of another truism - with violent crime, there are no victories, only a series of layered, illogical defeats. In the ongoing battle between man and who he is, Herzog discovers another insightful illustration. Into the Abyss is humble...and haunting.
