I have always liked Werner Herzog fictional films, but I have yet to warm to his documentaries. The reason why is that Herzog is heavy handed with his own personal convictions, and this heavy handiness is immediately apparent in Into the Abyss. Herzog opens the documentary as an interview with the convict, Michael Perry, on death row. He explains to Michael that he doesn't like him and that this doesn't matter because even people who are horrible individuals do not deserve to die. This ruins a lot of the film as it sets in our mind, already, that we are not going to like the central figure. What really annoyed me about this, is that his crimes and attitude towards his crimes were enough to make me dislike Michael. Herzog is patronising his audience here, Michael is sociopath and it is artificially charming and instead of showing us this (which he tried to) he tell us straight out.
Herzog is also terrible at interviewing, if an interviewee doesn't give the "right answer" Herzog will prod them until they cater to his film's tone. This brings two interviews to a complete halt; the interview with the father of one of the convicts and the interview with the mother of one of the victims. It also makes the film smack of bias, and this film will not make people who agree with Death Penalty change their opinions, but instead re-enforce it. And this is made worse Herzog tries to be objective in a couple of scenes, even getting far past the facts and trying to capture the emotional attitude of everyone involved.
Herzog however does allow to film to fall to pieces. The crimes in the film are very well documented, even giving a palatable feeling to the events. This ties into Herzog's eye for detail and research; picking the most aesthetically pleasing place to show where the cigarette butt fell, moving the camera into the thickets to create a sense of panic and then filming still the shots of the areas where people died.
The film also shows that Werner Herzog is possibly an empathetic person, even though he is not good at expressing this at times. For example, the town where the two convicts are from is shown to be suffocatingly poor and isolated from modernity. It makes the sense of loss seem that more wanton, and underlines the idea that one of the two convicts is a product of his environment. While the other seems that more fated to be a criminal no matter where he goes.
Into the Abyss is hard film to judge, the reason being is that what it does, it does incredibly, and comes across as bad, feels incredibly bad. The topic of the Death Penalty is probed and prodded but I was left feeling no different about the topic by the end, nor did I feel I could recommend this film to people to try and convert them to my opinion on the topic. And isn't that the two main reasons of any documentary to illuminate a topic or to make people take a more objective stance on something?
Herzog is also terrible at interviewing, if an interviewee doesn't give the "right answer" Herzog will prod them until they cater to his film's tone. This brings two interviews to a complete halt; the interview with the father of one of the convicts and the interview with the mother of one of the victims. It also makes the film smack of bias, and this film will not make people who agree with Death Penalty change their opinions, but instead re-enforce it. And this is made worse Herzog tries to be objective in a couple of scenes, even getting far past the facts and trying to capture the emotional attitude of everyone involved.
Herzog however does allow to film to fall to pieces. The crimes in the film are very well documented, even giving a palatable feeling to the events. This ties into Herzog's eye for detail and research; picking the most aesthetically pleasing place to show where the cigarette butt fell, moving the camera into the thickets to create a sense of panic and then filming still the shots of the areas where people died.
The film also shows that Werner Herzog is possibly an empathetic person, even though he is not good at expressing this at times. For example, the town where the two convicts are from is shown to be suffocatingly poor and isolated from modernity. It makes the sense of loss seem that more wanton, and underlines the idea that one of the two convicts is a product of his environment. While the other seems that more fated to be a criminal no matter where he goes.
Into the Abyss is hard film to judge, the reason being is that what it does, it does incredibly, and comes across as bad, feels incredibly bad. The topic of the Death Penalty is probed and prodded but I was left feeling no different about the topic by the end, nor did I feel I could recommend this film to people to try and convert them to my opinion on the topic. And isn't that the two main reasons of any documentary to illuminate a topic or to make people take a more objective stance on something?