A TRUE STORY ABOUT THE DEEP AND SCARY THINGS IN LIFE : "INTO THE ABYSS"

Werner Herzog has always been a filmmaker I have greatly admired. I am especially impressed by his documentaries and the original way he approaches rather original and out of the ordinary topics. I had watched Grizzly Man with these feelings and so was looking forward to watching Into the Abyss that, on a primary level appealed to my (admittedly rather bizarre) love of true crime, and on a secondary and far more important level was, as you can either guess or already know, a consideration on capital punishment, a subject I feel strongly about (as in I am strongly against it). I was, therefore, interested in seeing the take Herzog had chosen on the topic, even though I could well imagine it wasn’t going to exactly be a “happy” filmgoing experience… And I must say, Into the Abyss could not be more aptly named. The “topics” of the documentary are two young villains; Jason Burquett and Michael Perry. Their crime, murder of three people, one woman and two 16 year-old boys. The motive? The theft of a car. Yes, the only reason three innocent people had to day was that Burquett and Perry wanted the red Camaro belonging to a woman they barely knew. It would, in this story especially, be very easy to argue a case for capital punishment in the face of this rather senseless triple homicide. When we talk to the surviving family members, the devastation brought upon them by the loss and their pain, we cannot help but sympathize. But then, we turn to look at Burquett and Perry’s lives. The two young men were about 18 at the time of the murder. 10 years have gone by when the documentary is being filmed. Jason Burquett is serving a life sentence without parole for at least 40 years, Michael Perry has been sentenced to death, and has literally days left to live – all channels of appeal have run out. Burquett comes from a broken home in a poor neighborhood, his father is a habitual criminal, his mother is disabled and can barely look after him and his siblings. Of course this is no excuse for the crime, but you can see quite clearly that the chances of his growing up to be a lawyer or an engineer were pretty darned slim. Burquett is a little more frank about all that has happened. Perry claims to the last the murders were Burquett’s doing and he had no knowledge of it – even though DNA evidence claims otherwise. Herzog backgrounds all of this against testimonies from the prison chaplain and an ex-captain of an execution team and in the end leaves us, staring into what is in effect an abyss of hard lives, wrong choices and the unnecessary loss of innocent life that is followed by great pain… Herzog himself is quite frank about his sentiments on the matter right from the first moment of the documentary. He doesn’t like Perry – he says this to his face in an interview. And yet he is strongly against the death penalty. And he does a wonderful job of showing us why. One of the most touching testimonies comes – somewhat surprisingly – from Jason Burquett’s father. Mr. Burquett Sr. is in the same penitentiary as his son – although in different units – and is serving what is, in effect, a life sentence. Jason’s older brother Chris is also in prison. Mr. Burquett Sr. tells us how much he regrets not having been a proper father to his children. He talks of the day he testified for his son during the sentencing and recalling a moment when he was handcuffed to his own son so they could be both transported he points out of his own accord that “one doesn’t sink much lower than that”. On the other hand we have the testimony of someone like ??, the mother and sister of two of the victims. Their death was the last straw in a series of family tragedies that have shaken her so fundamentally that I cannot begin to imagine how she will ever be completely healed, and for what? Simply the theft of a car… The prison chaplain’s testimony makes up the “prologue”. I will not give too much away on that, but I will say this much; you have to have a heart of stone not to cry at least a little… And the end of the film shows the “nitty gritty” of an execution as told by the former execution team captain; former, as a nervous breakdown forced him to leave the job at the cost of his pension – he had started off life accepting capital punishment as just another fact of life, but had ended up vehemently opposed to it… So what is the solution? What is the answer? These are all, of course, questions to be debated in discussed in all countries that still have the death penalty. But Into the Abyss is a frank look at the pain that surrounds this sad affair and reminds us quite clearly that the whole thing is a tad more complicated than “some people just don’t deserve to live”.