Abstract

Into the Abyss and On Death Row, directed by Werner Herzog, consist in interviews with subjects condemned to death in jails in Florida and Texas. These films are not a manifesto against the death penalty. As in his previous films, the search is “to find some sort of ecstasy of truth”. Truth that in these prison documentaries, does not qualify as a confession. The abyss of the title does not refer to the imminent death that awaits the convict. It is about another unfathomable abyss, one to which Herzog proposes that he and the interviewees should approach together. Freud called it “the core of our being”, that abyss which is outermost and mysterious for the subject himself, one in which jouissance is knotted to the lack of being. For this the director displays an ethics of listening that is close to the ethical position of the analyst.

Keywords: Death penalty | truth | documentary | ethical