Monday, March 23, 2009

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)



Welcome to one of my all time favorite films, a 1999 documentary film by Errol Morris about execution technician Fred A. Leuchter.. This documentary is so firmly stuck in my cranium that my first 'In real life' documentary club was this very feature.

Director Errol Morris has never shied away from difficult subjects: Gates of Heaven explores the world of pet cemeteries, and The Thin Blue Line sets out to prove that hitchhiker Randall Adams did not commit a murder. Morris's view is distinctive; he finds the dark humor and oddity in the most solemn of subjects. His controversial documentary Mr. Death, therefore, should not come as a surprise to audiences.

The film begins on a surreal plane, as Fred Leuchter talks about his career as a designer of execution equipment. The son of a prison guard, Leuchter found himself in the execution game when, as an electrical engineer, he offered his services to help fix the electric chair used in North Carolina. His motivation? Humanitarian; previously the device in place would torture the prisoner before killing him. After his success in North Carolina, other states contacted him to help with their execution devices, and Leuchter helped devise lethal-injection devices, gas chambers, and gallows as well.

From here, though, the film takes an even more bizarre twist.

{snip}


One of the things that makes this film so special is that the film has multiple unexpected twists and turns and a central character that is difficult to pin down. It's a film that explores 'faith' in a non-religious context. It has a macabre sense of dead-pan humour (pun intended). It educates on the complexities of the meat and potatoes of state sanctioned murder. It raises the eternal spectre of free speech and it's limits. You are forced to question at what point must an individual utterly ignorant about the consequences of their actions be made responsible for them. And it is difficult to talk about without ruining the experience... so break out the popcorn kiddies, your midday matinee moofie is here!



After your uncomfortable viewing, you may want to peruse some of these articles (Spoilers ahoy!)...

~Fred A. Leuchter wiki entry...
~1990 article in the New York Times...
~A favourable biography of Fred A. Leuchter with links at the bottom to his reports...
~Rebuttal of Leuchter's report...
~A review of the film by a gentleman agreeable with Fred's beliefs...

I'll leave you with Errol Morris's own thoughts on Mr Leuchter

Well, how about this. I hope this is not too smarmy or self-serving. Loving and admiring Fred are two very different things. When I say I love Fred, I love the idea of Fred; I am fascinated by Fred. He has to be the most ingenuous person I have ever come across. Well, either ingenuous or absolutely insane.

For many, many years I have been in search of what I would call the absolutely clueless narrator, the narrator who has absolutely no perspective about himself, whatsoever.

You've all heard about the examined life. Here's an example of a life, which has not been examined at all. That's right, the totally unexamined life.

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