It's easy to view documentaries as less yielding of creative potential or stylistic freedom since principally it's a matter of holding a lens up to a story that's writing itself, casting itself and no sets have to be built. Werner Herzog has never been limited by this concern.
Many documentaries made nowadays are a series of talking heads and graphics montages. Maybe a filmmaker with a sense of humor will throw some ironically relevant music under the info-dumps. And documentary has also become virtually synonymous with issue and message films. Very few seem to find the same spiritual center as a fiction piece. Herzog does.
Into the Abyss is about a horrific, random and senseless crime spree that culminates in one of the myriad executions carried out by the state of Texas every year. But it's not a commentary on capital punishment or the society that produced such brainless, directionless criminals. It does something much more brave and original.
The movie goes on, the story is told, Herzog interviews his subjects, crime scene videotape details the nightmarish aftermath of atrocity having invaded the most peaceful and complacent of homes, we drive down depressing roads in the modern cultural wasteland of the place where the tragic saga has played out. And yet throughout, there is a tone and inflection imbued with grace, understatement and objectivity. We will experience all too real human pain, sometimes without warning, but we almost don't know what hit us until we've traversed well into the given moment.
There is something so simple, so docile, in the face of whatever brutality or doom or emotional quakes, making Herzog's film transcend the identity of a social issue piece or a sensationalistic expose to become an elliptical, humane contemplation of violence, life and loss. Considering Herzog's uncannily unique subjects and treatment in fiction and in documentary for decades---past films have involved entire casts being under hypnosis during shooting or being entirely comprised of dwarfs, or stories about men held captive in dungeons for lifetimes until adulthood---Into the Abyss may seem small potatoes by comparison.
But Herzog has often said he doesn't choose projects, that they instead choose him. If that's the case, then his approach as a documentary filmmaker, with works such as this or Grizzly Man or The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, is frankly uncanny, to stand still when he realizes the profundity of a story and simply allow it to wash over him and consume him. How many filmmakers have the wisdom and confidence to master such a process?
Many documentaries made nowadays are a series of talking heads and graphics montages. Maybe a filmmaker with a sense of humor will throw some ironically relevant music under the info-dumps. And documentary has also become virtually synonymous with issue and message films. Very few seem to find the same spiritual center as a fiction piece. Herzog does.
Into the Abyss is about a horrific, random and senseless crime spree that culminates in one of the myriad executions carried out by the state of Texas every year. But it's not a commentary on capital punishment or the society that produced such brainless, directionless criminals. It does something much more brave and original.
The movie goes on, the story is told, Herzog interviews his subjects, crime scene videotape details the nightmarish aftermath of atrocity having invaded the most peaceful and complacent of homes, we drive down depressing roads in the modern cultural wasteland of the place where the tragic saga has played out. And yet throughout, there is a tone and inflection imbued with grace, understatement and objectivity. We will experience all too real human pain, sometimes without warning, but we almost don't know what hit us until we've traversed well into the given moment.
There is something so simple, so docile, in the face of whatever brutality or doom or emotional quakes, making Herzog's film transcend the identity of a social issue piece or a sensationalistic expose to become an elliptical, humane contemplation of violence, life and loss. Considering Herzog's uncannily unique subjects and treatment in fiction and in documentary for decades---past films have involved entire casts being under hypnosis during shooting or being entirely comprised of dwarfs, or stories about men held captive in dungeons for lifetimes until adulthood---Into the Abyss may seem small potatoes by comparison.
But Herzog has often said he doesn't choose projects, that they instead choose him. If that's the case, then his approach as a documentary filmmaker, with works such as this or Grizzly Man or The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, is frankly uncanny, to stand still when he realizes the profundity of a story and simply allow it to wash over him and consume him. How many filmmakers have the wisdom and confidence to master such a process?