Into The Abyss

Werner Herzog is a filmmaker who explores the extremes of human behavior, always looking to the darkness of the human heart and the absurdity of existence. So it’s unsurprising, and perhaps inevitable, for him to make a film about death row, where the experience of life and death is intensified beyond the everyday. INTO THE ABYSS is his take on the American capital  punishment experience. (...)

What Herzog captures so well is the ubiquity of the numbness that surrounds the execution process. It is mechanistic and cold, and those involved have to detach themselves from their emotions in order to cope with the abyss that they face on a daily basis. This results in not only the dehumanisation of the condemned, but in the dehumanization of everyone around him. (Siobhan mcKeown)