"Tell me about the encounter with a squirrel"; this is Werner Herzog's final question to the Texas Death House chaplain, who ministers to prisoners before they are to be executed. Before this point the chaplain has acted very coldly about the time he spends with these men in their final moments. The chaplain darts away from the tougher questions, instead talking about the serenity he finds playing golf, and about the animals he sees on the golf course, like, for example, squirrels. Finally, Herzog sees a chink in the chaplain's armour; an eccentricity that magnifies his humanity. Herzog prods, and the chaplain mentions a moment where he almost ran over a group of squirrels with his golf cart, and how in that moment he held those creatures' lives in his hands. In that moment, Herzog has exposed his humanity and the chaplain begins to weep and reveals how, unlike a golf cart, he cannot stop these people from being executed.
At the centre of the picture, Herzog focuses on a triple murder in the small Texas city of Conroe. In 2001, Michael Perry and Jason Aaron Burkett murdered a middle-aged housewife, Sandra Stotler, who was the mother of a mutual acquaintance of theirs, all so they could steal her car. When they found out they did not have the alarm code to drive out of the gated community in which she lived, they called their acquaintance, who arrived home with a friend of theirs. When they arrived they killed them both and disposed their bodies in the woods. Several days later, after a shoot-out with the police, the killers were arrested and confessed shortly after. Burckett was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Perry was sentenced to death.
Herzog subtitles his film, A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life, as he is primarily interested in the lives of the people affected by capital punishment, and not by capital punishment as a whole. Throughout the course of the film, he never once talks to a government official on decisions regarding incarceration, or the death penalty. Instead he talks to those who are incarcerated, their friends and families, the families of the victims and those whose lives and careers revolve around capital punishment (such as the chaplain). It is clear from the outset that this is not an exposé, but a celebration of life, from the very old to the very young. Among Herzog's interviewees is Jason Aaron Burckett's father, who is also serving a life sentence. Burckett's father tells Herzog how he pleaded to the jury not to take away his son "who had trash for a father". It is moments like this that remind us that even people who do evil things can affect those around them, no matter how much we want to think of them as simply "trash".
However, this does not mean that Herzog is giving either Michael Perry or Jason Aaron Burckett an easy time, and he certainly is not attempting to elicit sympathy for their actions, just their punishment. He utterly despises the death penalty but he knows that these men are, when you burrow deep enough, evil minded. Burkett is a handsome, charismatic man, and quite clearly sociopathic. Perry, on the other hand, is a cowardly, loathsome, weasel faced man. Within a minute of meeting Perry, Herzog tells him, in a matter of fact tone: "I don't have to like you, but you are a human being". Moments like this, when he interviews these two men, is an attempt to dissect the nihilism of the crime and of the perpetrators, which in contrast to the soulful, tearful interviews of the victims families, creates a wider picture on the value of life.
Structurally, the film has six chapters, with each chapter title relating to the precise element of the tragedy ('The Dark Side of Death', for example). So it treats death as almost a contradiction, something which battles with life and in the end we will all lose. One of the interviews is conducted in the graveyard outside of the death house, each grave marked only with numbers, not names. This is spookily reminiscent of grave sites for fallen soldiers in the First World War, who died without any means of identification; they are no longer men with personalities, they are merely serial numbers. This is also true of the epilogue, where Herzog speaks with Fred Allen, a man who presided over 125 executions, as part of a team who would strap the condemned to their gurneys and make sure they are killed as quickly and efficiently as possible. He remarks how, with a lot of practice and professionalism, he can strap someone into a gurney in fifteen-seconds. He tells Herzog how, after the execution of Carla Faye Tucker, he simply could not take another life. "No sir," Allen weeps, "nobody has the right to take another life."
Thankfully, it is not all quite so maudlin throughout the epilogue. Jason Aaron Burckett's wife reveals that she is pregnant with his child (it is suggested that this was achieved through some contraband semen being sent out of the prison) she beams and shows Herzog the ultrasound of her baby. Despite knowing whose seed this child came from, it is still a moment of joy, and contrasts with the thought that the same man who could, with Michael Perry, take the lives of three people can also create life. It is perhaps an uncomfortable contrast, but one cannot help feeling that Herzog's goal is to praise life, in all its forms, whether good, bad or evil, has for the most part been achieved. This is especially true considering how death seems to linger over everyone being interviewed. For example, the sister of one of the victims says how, in a 6-year span, she lost her brother, her mother, her uncle and her father (the latter two due to an accident and natural causes). Earlier, when Herzog interviews the brother of the third victim, he asks what the two teardrops tattooed to his face symbolise, he tells him that they symbolise his brother and sister's death (the latter due to an accident). However, in both cases, they remark how those deaths have caused them to be stronger for their children and loved ones.
While it is not a perfect film, it manages to be by turns both bleak and optimistic, showing death as a contrast to life. Herzog has chosen his case carefully, as he knows that the nihilism which imbues these two men is self defeating, and the murders they committed cannot erase the decency that exists in the families of the people they killed. Well worth seeking out, it is one of the best documentaries of 2011.
8/10
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