MisterWhiplash
Fred A. Leuchter is a man whom you want to despise, to hate with all your being. It's easy to do. How could a man be so foolish and ego-maniacal? He was already fortified with a solid career as an engineer who helped manufacturer and supervise the more 'humane' developments of the electric chair, lethal injection, hanging, and gas chamber methods of capital punishment. On that point, whether or not you agree with the death penalty, he worked as a professional (or at least in his mind he did, to where he was contracted all over the country). But then came the neo-Nazi/holocaust denier from Canada who drafted Leuchter- a man who never faced defending such a man (albeit he still to this day believes any person has a fair right to a defense, and still albeit in Canada)- to go to Poland and Germany, dig up some samples off the fronts of the walls in the dilapidated concentration camps, and see if gas was to be detected. He brought back samples (undercover), gave it to a scientist, who found there were no traces of gas. Imbued by this, he wrote the 'Leuchter Report', and then everything went to hell...In Errol Morris's film of Mr. Death, Leuchter is portrayed in a very complex manner. You're not sure what to make of him going from scene to scene; he knew what he was doing was for science- he professes also to this day to not be anti-Semitic, this despite his appearances as a guest speaker with "Revisionist History" groups- but he wasn't the right person for the job, if the job should've even been considered in the first place. As the scientist at the Massachusets facility Leuchter (not saying what really for) brought the samples said, there wasn't enough real data to prove or disprove anything about what was in the walls. Also, Leuchter didn't do his homework on matters surrounding the camps. Any filmmaker might've just focused on this portion of Leuchter, as his most notorious moment which was his own undoing (no more career, no more wife, reduced to trying to sell half a lethal injection machine).But Morris has the first half hour of the film as an utterly fascinating dissection of the mechanics and physics of cooking a man with electricity, or the gears of making sure that injecting a man's death is by all means 'comfortable'. He's a guy who drinks, astonishingly, 40 cups of coffee, smoking 6 packs a day, and seems perfectly normal. With this prelude, we're given what seems to be another of the honorable defectives in a line of Morris films (i.e. Gates of Heaven, Vernon Florida, Fast Cheap and Out of Control). So by the time the Leuchter report story unfolds, he comes off as, in a way, more pathetic than really evil. As one of the other interviewees observes, he's not naive (hence the money he was paid and the notoriety he soaked up before the big fall in reputation), and he also believes in free speech and the right to a defense, so on and so on. He's certainly not a man one would usually want to have a cup of Joe with. But pure evil? Mr. Death is one of Morris's most peering and uncompromising documentaries, and this time his profile of this not-quite tragic figure allows for him plenty of room for contemplation- not about if the holocaust didn't happen, lord knows Morris isn't out for that, and I'm sure he would believe the jury is in, but about the dangers of pride in one's work (i.e. "Leuchter wasn't Sherlock Holmes"), and as well about the nature of execution itself. We're given the plethora of chilling visuals from Morris's great abstract sensibility: extreme close-ups of flesh being prepared to get killed, of Leuchter preparing in one of the execution rooms, of him just walking down the side of a highway out of focus (lit wonderfully, most of the time, by Robert Richardson). And, of course, the head-on close-ups where we're getting the full scoop right between the eyes. It adds to a sense of mild-mannered terror, at least in the Leuchter bits, even when he's talking like a rational being (which is off and on).What strikes the most about Mr. Death, however, is how Leuchter justified himself by either providing some human decency, or in providing facts. Both have the tinge of delusion, more or less, and at the same time an earnestness in how he views himself in relation- clinically- with his subjects. How human, exactly, is Leuchter himself? His marriage happened almost on a lark to get away from his mother. He rarely cracks a joke. He's almost reminiscent of some side character no one thinks about in some science fiction film. And you never want to look away from him. Eerie
bob the moo
Fred Leuchter Jr is an engineer who has become something of a specialist in the design and manufacture of electric chairs and other methods of capital punishment. In this film we hear him discuss his work and join him on his visit to Auschwitz where he maintains that the mass extermination of people in world war II could not have been physically possible.As with many other Errol Morris, this is a fascinating study of an interesting character, although not one I would particularly want to meet or have any common ground with. When it is allowing him to talk about his trade the film is interesting mainly because Leuchter's opinion of his work and, more importantly, himself is engaging to listen to. His attitude towards his work marks him out as somewhat of an eccentric but yet he sees himself as an expert in his craft – which it is also strangely clear that he is not. However the film loses this "appeal" somewhat in the second half where it becomes more about Leuchter's report on the Holocaust more than it does about the man himself. In a way it does feel like Morris has lost the essence of his approach by making sure that Leuchter's words are not allowed to just stand unquestioned.Of course nobody could fault this approach because it was important not to just give this man a stage to speak unchallenged but it does rather change the film. Of course this is not to say that it isn't interesting because it still is. Pardon the pun but Morris does give Leuchter enough rope to hang himself and produces some telling moments such as him proclaiming himself the only expert in the world. The various spokespeople for the Jewish community don't really counter Leuchter and do themselves an injustice by being quite emotional in the face of his arguments. Fortunately there is enough actual factual response to him to make up for this.Overall then a quite fascinating film but not quite what I expected from Morris. As it gets deeper into Leuchter's report on the Holocaust it does rather lose touch with the man but is still interesting and the approach was a necessary evil given the subject matter.
Scott
This is a documentary that feels like a compressed news broadcast. Errol Morris, the reason why Werner Herzog ate his shoe, makes this documentary about, well, the rise and fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., also known as Mr. Death. During the 70's and 80's, Mr. Leuchter found himself in a successful niche improving upon and creating new machines to implement capital punishment. Though he was not a licensed technician, he sold blueprints and homemade machines to state penitentiaries as well as acted as a consultant on the lethal machines in prisons across the country. Where Mr. Leuchter went awry was when he was contacted to investigate the truthfulness to the claim that Nazis used lethal gas to exterminate thousands of people at concentration camps in Germany and Poland. His research found him knee deep in the ruins of Auschwitz, taking rock samples off the walls of gas chamber rooms to take back to the United States for arsenic analysis. His research turned up no traces of cyanide in the wall samples nor evidence of the structural integrity of the supposed gas chambers to safely contain the gases. He presented his findings to the trial of Ernst Zundel, a holocaust denier on trial in Canada for publishing documents refuting the Holocaust ever occurred, and was successively outcast from society as a fellow Holocaust denier. Through Morris' ninety minute film, we are shown the relative success of a man quickly sink to the bottom of the world's hating order through the publication of one research project. Mr. Leuchter is portrayed as objectively as possible in this film, sometimes even going to black while his voice continues, but the sheer tenacity of this man makes me grit my teeth with rage when I think of him. His lack of concern for human life and the sufferings of others and his ambivalence towards people as both models of death and financial gain is a horrifying example of what kinds of people do what kinds of things in this world. The movie was well made with nice interludes of beautifully shot slow motion 35mm as well as video footage from trials, video from Leuchter's own research in the tombs of Auschwitz, and the interviews of Leuchter sitting and talking about his work as calmly as a dove coos.
