Man and his executioner “Justice in the extreme is often unjust” says Jocast in Racine’s tragedy La Thebaïde - a sentence that Award winning German director Werner Herzog would probably make his own. More than merely criticising the American legal system through the case of triple homicide convict Michael Perry, Herzog asks the following questions: what is Justice? How can we cope with the tragedy of having to murder a young man for his (yet unforgivable) mistakes? And how does the overwhelming mechanism of Justice leave a mark on every single person involved, from the family of the victims to the executioner himself? Into the Abyss tells the story of Michael Perry and Jason Burke, two young Texans incarcerated for a triple homicide back in 2001. Michael has been sentenced to death and has only eight days left to live; Jason was given 50 years of incarceration, and will regain freedom in his early sixties. Even if the construction of the movie in chapters would normally lend itself to a more clear-cut, didactic approach, Herzog’s various interviews make our feelings more complex toward the case. When using police video material to describe the homicide, the film gets sharp, gloomy and depressing. The common landscapes of Texas are the uncanny location of the triple homicide. Calm quotidian places are filmed through digital cameras which make them more sadly real: sharp contrasts, bad definition and sordid stories. But, when it comes to face the unwilling protagonists, the film becomes far more human and surprisingly succeeds in instilling both emotion and reflexion in any of the characters’ stories. Herzog knows how to ask a question, and manages to touch important points and collect moving moments.
words by Axel scoffier
If Justice condemns individually for individual misdemeanours, there is something sadly predictable in this social reproduction of marginality. Culturally religious and geographically imprisoned, small-town Texas looks like a socially cursed land which strongly believes in his fate. Fate is a key element of Greek tragedy which from Aeschylus’s The Oresteia sets out to solve injustice and establish equilibrium through Justice. It is almost programmed, mechanical. Michael Perry’s story about his canoe excursion with a group of teenagers points out the bitter logic of acting and facing direct consequences. Ultimately, his slaying of three people to steal a sports car will fatally lead him to be given a 9 years imprisonment sentence followed by death penalty. Because early murders can only be balanced by another, Tragedy crops up, and the unforgiving mechanism of Justice calls upon the murderer’s death without bringing back the dead. In its last minutes, the film explores what the executioner calls the dash-time: time between birth and death (which could also be, for Perry, time between sentence and death). Life itself is bound by the Tragedy of death. Whether you are optimist or pessimist, the idea of life as a dash-time interrogates the best way to use it. Through personal questions, Herzog gets authentic feelings from people who are not used to expressing themselves. In Into the Abyss, Herzog’s best achievement is to drag life out of darkness. He finds life in this murderer who stays smiley a few days ahead of his death; life in this woman, daughter and sister of the victims, who fights to reconstruct meaning through her own children; life in Jason Burke’s girlfriend who gets pregnant illegally to raise a child. Herzog sees life back there, in Texas, where the struggle for life and sense seems tragically desperate and pointless.
Into The Abyss is in cinemas 30 March via Revolver Entertainment