REVIEW: Into The Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life (2012)

  Into The Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life is the new documentary from Werner Herzog, whose recent career resurgence has seen the release of the likes of Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Into The Abyss is accompanied with the TV documentary series called “Death Row”, which goes over other cases.

  The film looks at the case of Michael Perry, who was convicted of the murder of three people and who was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Herzog interviews him eight days before the execution in an effort to look at the toll that the murders and the death sentence have taken. Herzog also interviews his accomplice Jason Burkett as well as the families of the two boys and the families of the victims.

  Herzog is clear at the start of the film that he is not making a campaign film. While it is clear that he is deeply opposed to the death penalty, he does not allow his documentary to become an issue’s movie. As a result, the film does not seek to prove that the death sentence was unjust or that the boys are as innocent as they now claim. Similarly, he is not using the film as a mouthpiece for the prisoner’s appeals. At one point, Herzog makes this clear to Perry, “I may not like you, but I do respect you.” What Herzog wishes to do is document the huge human cost of both the murders and the execution and imprisonment of the two perpetrators. Most moving may be Burkett’s father, himself under life imprisonment, who deeply and eloquently talks about his regrets, how he was never there to raise Burkett properly and how the whole thing might be his fault.

  However, while the film is most certainly a well-intentioned and humanist documentary, it fails to provide a concrete basis. It is clear about what it doesn’t want to be, but it is never fully certain about what it does want to be. Despite Herzog’s refusal to look at the murder case itself in terms of locating guilt, he nevertheless focuses a large amount of running time on laying bare the sordid details of the case – the murders of the three victims, the sheer nihilism behind the crimes and the capture of the killers. As a result, the film jumps disconcertingly from the deeply personal to the deeply impersonal. The film is at its most harrowing when it details the procedure of execution (or as Herzog puts it, in his usual fashion “The Protocol of Death”) or when talking with a former Death House captain who supervised 125 executions before he couldn’t take it anymore. When confronting the impersonal, the film is horrifying, but when it shifts back to the personal – in particular with the interviews of the victim’s families – it never recovers the near schizophrenic contrast between the disturbing coldness on one hand and the raw humanity and warmth on the other.

  Perhaps Herzog should have worked more on the structure of the documentary (the Hank Skinner and James Barnes episodes of “Death Row” are much better in this regard, probably because they are half the length), as it carries a valuable and important message that never really comes across. It feels like a missed opportunity, although such qualitative statements seem horribly misplaced when talking about this powerful but fundamentally unfocussed film. Indeed, the film feels set to define what could be a fourth strain of cinema – the others being entertainment cinema, art cinema and political cinema (which often resembles a more didactic strain of either entertainment or art cinema). This fourth strain could be known as human cinema and an antecedent could be Claude Lanzmann’s monumental Shoah, more a testimonial than a film. These are films that are impossible to qualify in terms of art or politics and certainly by entertainment value. They exist on another plane and it may prove to be a while before we are ready to accept them as much as they may deserve.

REVIEW: Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)

  Cave of Forgotten Dreams is the new documentary from Werner Herzog, following closely on from his powerful Grizzly Man and his beautiful Encounters at the End of the World. This time, Herzog has been granted exclusive access to film the recently uncovered cave paintings in the Chauvet cave, which have been estimated to be over 32,000 years old. With a crew of only four people including Herzog himself, the film was shot in 3-D.

  In typically Herzogian fashion, the documentary is made up of odd interviews, philosophical ruminations in voiceover and imagery of natural beauty. The cave paintings are frequently held onscreen, allowing the viewer the time to see them properly. Some paintings feature horses with eight legs in an attempt to display movement much like Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending A Staircase while others give an insight into the myths of the people who did the paintings. Meanwhile, Herzog’s wonders whether these paintings were considered art when they were first drawn or whether they were used for rituals, or whether they were simply used for target practise. Most exciting, however, is the pervasive feeling that the cameras are disturbing the cave dwellers, that they are still there and are hiding in the shadows of the caves, waiting for the cameras to leave before they can get back to work. The sight of a cowering caveman is expected, despite the obvious impossibility.

  Back above ground, Herzog interviews the archaeologists who are studying the caves as well as less orthodox experts, such as an expert perfumer who muses on what the cave may have smelt off and an “experimental archaeologist” who plays the Star Spangled Banner on a replica whistle. With a range of opinions and thoughts, Herzog constructs an interesting art history documentary. However, the human’s compulsion to create art is not of interest to him.

  Instead, Herzog’s questions are much more philosophical and, to be honest, a little hard to take. Though Herzog never falls into dewy-eyed sentimentality, his use of a heartbeat in the soundtrack and a score full of operatic, religious music is unconvincing. An epilogue involving albino crocodiles and a voiceover wondering what they would make of the paintings was, by Herzog’s own admission, a tangential move into the realm of science fiction. However, it can only feel irrelevant. What makes Grizzly Man work so well is that Herzog found the perfect subject through which to present his own ideas. In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, his segues into his own rumination are notably forced and particularly unconvincing. In the end, the prevailing feeling is that everyone is making a little too much of these caves.

  Ultimately, you watch Cave of Forgotten Dreams wanting to be fascinated, but the film only manages to achieve this once or twice. It is an interesting film but it is also an overblown film. A case in point is when Herzog talks of the discovery of the tracks of a little boy and a wolf side by side. Herzog wonders whether the wolf was stalking the boy or if their tracks wer made thousands of years apart. This is all very intruiging until Herzog adds that it is possible that they walked side by side as allies, something that is a little too much like Disney than Herzog. An interesting film and one well worth seeing, but one to be taken with a pinch of salt.