This week has certainly been full of strange coincidences. One of them happened with one of my favorite movie directors Werner Herzog. While working in Clapham Common I was passing Clapham Picturehouse cinema and by complete accident saw that Herzog’s newest movie “Into the Abyss” was about to be premiered in London for the first time with a live satellite interview broadcasted right after the screening. This was rather a strange find because I haven’t been following his recent work, so I immediately bought the ticket. This had left me in a cheerful mood the whole day. I was even more surprised the following day in Bethnal Green to find in exactly the same way that one of his most renowned movies Fitzcaraldo is being screened for free in Bethnal Green Church. So in one week I managed to see both of the films. Now a bit about his newest film: “Into the Abyss” is a movie about prisoners sentenced for capital punishment with an insight into their last days, their crimes and the lives of the relatives of the victims, covered from different stand-points. As the movie unravels it becomes clear that it’s more of an existential piece about the value of life and meaning of death that the judicial system in America which plays God among the men it suppose to govern. The film certainly ranks among Herzog’s finest documentaries in which the concept of “ecstatic truth” as used by the director is employed to reveal much more than the bare facts and realities of life.
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