Director Werner Herzog has found a distributor for his upcoming documentary, which he describes as “a gaze into the abyss of the human soul.” To be fair, he says the same thing about bears, icebergs, soft-serve ice cream, sugar packets, logo t-shirts, nose-hair trimmers, ducks, wheelbarrows, Eskimos, Starbucks coffee, and the spork. Specifically, this one’s about death row inmates.
ZDF Enterprises is handling worldwide TV and theatrical rights to the film outside the U.S. and the U.K. for Werner Herzog’s forthcoming docu “Gazing into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life,” about death row inmates.
In the film, Herzog — who is enjoying a major hit with his current pic, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” — embarks on a dialogue with the prisoners, discussing life and death, and examines their stories and their crimes, which he describes as “a gaze into the abyss of the human soul.”
Among the inmates portrayed in the film are two men convicted of triple murder, another who killed his girlfriend and her two mentally retarded sons, and a woman — one of only 10 on Texas’ death row — charged with abducting a newborn baby and killing the child’s mother. [Variety]
This sounds amazing, but to be fair, I could listen to Werner Herzog narrate anything. “Oont one day, za preezoner schtab me in mein belly. I vass bleedink all over za floor, oont za prizon schtaff urge me to get medical care. But I say nein, ist flesh vound. Eez beautiful. Za poet must never look away.”
As documentarian-narrators go, Herzog is like the opposite of Nick Broomfield, who’s like listening to a retarded British Kermit the Frog try to gargle hot oatmeal.