ralph_brandi's Full Review: Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter J...
"Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr.", the new documentary by Errol Morris, is an odd little film with a grand moral. The film starts out profiling "execution technologist" Fred Leuchter, a man who made significant modifications to the electric chair, with the expressed aim of making executions "more humane". As word of his prowess spreads, he is asked to work on other such technologies, such as lethal injections suites, gas chambers, and gallows. But what starts out as a quirky look at an oddball character, in the vein of Morris' "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control", soon takes on a darker, more menacing hue as Leuchter is (willingly) sucked into a world he doesn't really understand. What results is a classical tragedy of our hero, such as he is, being destroyed by his own hubris, and yet, at the end, we feel he got exactly what he deserved.
Leuchter, having made his reputation as America's leading execution technologist, is contracted by noted German-Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel to produce a report to be used in one of his many legal trials. Zündel pays for Leuchter to travel to the concentration camps of Europe, including Auschwitz, and provide his professional opinion on whether there were gas chambers there. Leuchter, having been led to believe that he can do this by his past ability to take on work for which he is singularly unqualified, makes the trip and, as Morris makes devastatingly clear, completely bollixes up, concluding that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. The scenes of Leuchter at Auschwitz, videotaped by the trip members themselves, chipping away at the bricks of the dilapidated concentration camp, are appalling.
Morris' films generally fall into a sort of eccentric rhythm; "Thin Blue Line" had kind of a throb to it, punctuated by the periodic re-enactments of the crime. "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" was like a whirlwind, flitting from character to character. But "Mr. Death" never achieves that kind of rhythm; it starts out with a kind of jarring, lurching rhythm, but that's interrupted by the middle section showing the trip to Germany as a reasonably straight narrative. The result is a film that, while it tells an important story and dismantles its central character thoroughly, doesn't quite cohere the way other Morris films have. In short, it's an important subject, but probably Morris' least good film.
From Errol Morris, the award-winning director of The Thin Blue Line, comes the provocative and chilling true story of Fred A Leuchter, Jr., the son of...More at Buy.com
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