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Mr. Death: The Rise & Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr.

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3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think it goes without saying that most of the general public don't go wild for documentary films. The masses, that is, generally prefer a fictional cliffhanger/thriller with cleverly prefigured twists and turns.

That said, this is one documentary that would most certainly please those very masses. It plays like the highest rate cliffhanger and while the twists and turns are real, they are as clever as any fictive ones I've seen.

"Mr Death" is the story of Fred Leuchter, a self-taught but obviously intelligent "engineer" of execution equipment that is more humane than that currently in practice. The first part of the film is largely a biography of his rise from working on an electric chair in Tenessee, to redesigning a lethal injection room, a gallows, and even a gas chamber in other states.

If the first half is about his rise, the second half - the title suggests it - pertains to his fall. This happens when Ernst Zundel, a holocaust denier out of Canada, hires Luechter after being brought up on arcane charges by the Canadian government, where it is illegal to deny the holocaust on paper(?). Luechter's job is to go to Auschwitz to determine whether Zundel's claim that there were no gas chambers there is in any way rational. The film chronicles Luecther's travels and ultimate judgement that Zundel is correct.

From there - and Zundel eventually loses the case - Luechter's buzzing career enters a tail spin. No one in the states, that is, wants to work with a holocaust denier, much less on execution equipment. He is blackballed.

Most of the film consists of interviews with Luechter interspersed with scentery pertaining to the events being discussed. (Also interviewed are Ernst Zundel, another holocaust denier David Irving, Luechter's anonymous ex-wife, an historian who followed Luechter's Auschwitz travels with an eye towards discrediting them, and a few others.)

Like other Errol Morris films, Mr. Death will have you thinking about its subject matter long after the stop button has been pressed. It entertains questions such as how we are to feel towards Luechter. Is he an anti-semite who had mallicious intent? Is he an intelligent man who just did faulty research? Is he a man not nearly as smart as he thinks who simply wanted noteriety? Or is he - just entertain the thought - a man who has uncovered a politically unpopular truth? Who is this man Fred Luechter, and what were his motivations?

These questions are left up to the viewer. While I get the feeling that Morris wants us to feel sorry for Luechter as a man who got sloppy due to the excitement of the trial, the film never says one way or the other. The choice is yours.

So whether you like documentaries or mainstream thrillers, this is a film that is sure to ensnare you both while it is playing and after it has played.

Without ever hard-selling the point, this film juxtaposes one system of state-sanctioned murder (U.S. death penalty) with another (Nazi-era Holocaust). This pairing is almost beside the point, though, as the filmmaker brings us down into the life of Fred Leuchter, a man who seems malleable and dim-witted on one level, although perhaps far smarter than he lets on. Leuchter at times seems merely a simple, ultimately compassionate individual (he believes in the death penalty but wants to make it dignified and humane); at other times the glint in his eye hints at a far different character and motivation.

Altogether "Mr. Death" is a fascinating study of a man whose macabre career notwithstanding comes across as more sympathetic than one might expect given the subject matter. Occasionally, I felt as if Leuchter were Chance Gardner in "Being There," or perhaps Zelig from the Woody Allen film of the same name: essentially a guiless person who wants to belong. That may, in fact, be rather too charitable in the case of Leuchter, though one of the movie's charms is that it leaves possible this ambiguity even as the credits roll.

Some wonderful editing and camerawork throughout. Intoxicating and creepy--a film that's hard to turn away from.

"The human body is not easy to destroy."

And so Errol Morris introduces us to the latest intriguing character to sit in front of his Interrotron. Fred Leuchter is a slippery guy. He's a self styled engineer in an industry consisting almost solely of himself: consulting prisons on instruments of execution. Leuchter himself is not even sure how he got there. "I built helmets for electric chairs, so now I could build lethal injection machines," he says. "I now build lethal injection machines, so now I'm competent to build a gallows. And since I'm building gallows, I'm also competent to work on gas chambers, because I've done all the other three." He almost laments that he's been shoe horned into an area that few others would be willing to go, but he does so anyway. He clearly enjoys his line of work and comes to see himself as a real expert. This belief in his own propaganda would be his downfall.

He's a proponent of the death penalty but has a strong conviction that it should be handled "humanely." Those awaiting execution, after decades of imprisonment, are "just like you and me" he argues. He would like to see lethal injection performed in molded seats like a dentist's office has. The condemned could watch TV, listen to music or look at pictures on the wall. Furthermore, execution could be a safe and painless process for the executioners as well. "Nobody should have to place his life in jeopardy because an execution is being conducted." And the beguiling thing about Leuchter is that he is absolutely sincere. He is completely without guile. He clearly wants us to like him.

Errol Morris tends toward the fringes in his selection of subject matter, but he rarely goes wrong. He invented a camera he calls the Interrotron that uses mirrors to show his own face directly over the camera lens. Using this and a prodigious skill as an interviewer, he manages to coax out the very essence of his subjects - often without even them realizing it. Go rent The Thin Blue Line and you'll see what I mean. Leuchter was initially going to be part of his last project, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, but Morris knows a good thing when he sees it and decided to make a new film entirely about Leuchter. And his strange occupation and views on capital punishment would have made a good subject alone. But Fred doesn't end there.

In 1988, Ernst Zundel was on trial under an obscure Canadian law for "publishing information he knew to be untrue." He published books claiming the Holocaust never happened. He called on Leuchter as the only man supposedly familiar enough with the instruments of execution to verify whether Auschwitz' infamous gas chambers really existed. Leuchter was flown to Auschwitz where he stole some brick and concrete samples and had them tested for cyanide. None was found. This gave rise to The Leuchter Report - a now famous document among neo-Nazi groups that supposedly offers evidence that the Holocaust deniers are correct.

Now it would be very easy to paint Leuchter as a simple dupe, but Morris recognizes that he is as much a victim of himself as of the hate groups that he travels around speaking to. In the end, he pays dearly for his botched investigation and his hubris (and is still paying today). Leuchter, believing he was the savior of a wrongly accused man and "the only expert in the world" who could uncover the truth, clings to the knowledge that he was correct, despite all the evidence to the contrary and even his own admitted ineptitude at the sort of investigation he tried to do. The technician who actually performed the tests even confirms that Leuchter was wrong in his assumptions. But Leuchter is a believer.

Morris has given us a masterful film and a look at a man who is anything but simple, but wrapped in a very simple package. He doesn't provide us with ready made answers for the quandaries that exist within Fred Leuchter, but shows him to us in three dimensions. It's not always a pretty picture, but is an engrossing one

Purely on artistic merit I would award this film an 11 on a scale of ten. Most documentaries dream of achieving this kind of artistic impression. As for its command of the subject it struggles too hard to be passive. In many ways that passivity is charming because it gives a chance to show what sort of person the real Fred Leuchter is but in turn it glances over the holocaust denial issue.

The portrait of Fred A. Leuchter that comes through is a gullible and misguided man who strive to his utmost to achieve acceptance from his peers. His rabid desire for acceptance is made clear by the fact that he himself pronounces his last name as if it were "Loocher" but Ernst Zundel pronounces it "Loikter" in the German sense. When it comes down to the video Leuchter made for Zundel we find him adopting Zundel's pronunciation of his own name. In the end Leuchter succumbs to the siren song of the holocaust deniers who bestow upon him all the respect and admiration of any university professor. One feels almost sorry for such a man when his highly unpopular views ends up costing him what little success he had achieved. I don't personally believe Fred Leuchter actually means to be the spokesperson of holocaust denial but he finds it too difficult to give up the position he has achieved through that.

At one point when he is asked if he could reconsider his views on the holocaust his only reply is, "No, I'm beyond that now". The one thing this video portrays is the man who is virtually lost in the muddle of holocaust deniers and their opponents; the former manipulate him and the latter villify him. Leuchter is really just a mediocre and unfortunate man who has been thoroughly exploited by people who really don't care about him as anything more than a way to further their own racist agenda.

To get more aquainted with the real issues behind the Leuchter report I would recommend "Truth Prevails: Demolishing Holocaust Denial : The End of the Leuchter Report" by Shelly Shapiro which is a collection of articles on the Leuchter report written by several of the interviewees in this film among others.

Errol Morris delivers again in this fascinating study of a man who fancies himself a death expert.

The beauty of the film is that it is not, as I anticipated, a look at a man's descent into antisemitism. It's more about a small man whose heart begins in more or less the right place, but is not bright enough, or wise enough, to see when his ego has led him astray.

Fred Leuchter is a self-styled "execution equipment" specialist who manages to make a name for himself among state officials who require such gear. He's recruited by a Holocaust denier to check out Auschwitz, and he dutifully goes to dig up samples for scientific study. He's evidently prevented by his pride, or limited intellect, from seeing that he's made a terrible mistake after his evidence is shown to be amateurish.

The principal character can be admired in the early part of the film for his resolute concern that executions be humane. One gets the feeling that Mr. Morris, given the time he devotes to it, expects us to see great irony in such a concept as "humane execution." However, even I, as a capital punishment opponent, can certainly appreciate the value of striving for relatively quick and painless executions.

But therein lies the delicious ambigiuity of an Errol Morris film. On the one hand I'm inclined to see the filmmaker as having an agenda he's backing with irony, but it's just as possible he's merely setting me up for the decline of his protagonist, as it were. Of course, he's doing both, and more. It's a testament to what be done with documentary.

This is a fabulous study of what 40 cups of coffee a day can do to a man.

Errol Morris, via The Fog of War, proved that he is one of the most talented documentary filmmakers of our day. This film directly proceeded the McNamera classic but much of his skill at the genre is on display. The interplay of music and camera, and the way in which he captures onscreen the unsuspecting and pathetic Fred Leuchter is artful-this is true even the close-ups of coffee pots and electrical currents emanating from his head during the opening.

That viewers feel sympathy for this confused, broken man who is devoid of social skills and social comprehension is an unintended consequence of the vehemence in which the forces of political correctness attacked him. He definitely had no idea as to the way he would be vilified simply by appearing at the Zundel trial. Leuchter, an engineer in deed only, with no scientific academic background whatsoever, conducted a middle school like science experiment at Birchenau and believed, based on some shoddy chemical analysis, that no cyanide gas was used there. The result was that his life was ruined.

Personally, as a life long learner who has never been, and will never be, a historical revisionist, the destruction of Fred Leuchter is appalling. I completely believe and know that the holocaust occurred, but am aghast that certain "activists" think they have the right to destroy of the lives of those who disagree with them. Why didn't these brave activists respond to his arguments rather than conduct a campaign of hate? His positions are juvenile. Leuchter knew nothing about chemical tests, history, or society in general. He was an easy mark, but their emotionalizing the issue had the reverse effect. It made people think they had no answers to his arguments. It legitimizes revisionism. By squashing this non-entity they made him a martyr. What they should have done was publish vigorous refutations, instead they made Leuchter appear a champion of free inquiry; which, by the way, he is in comparison to shrieking critics and the Canadian government. This is the way in which political correctness and reckless emotion have damaged our intellects and degraded our culture. Bullying, shaming, and forcing guilt upon others is exactly how you vile personas like Ernst Zundel were created in the first place. Zundel is a reaction to such attempts.

'Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.' is a hair-raising documentary about a execution equipment expert and his clumsy survery of concentration camps in Poland that led to the demise of his career. The first thirty minutes of the film discusses Leuchter's career as an expert in "humane" executions of prisoners. It tells of his various viewpoints and his life history. The story takes a sudden turn when the focus of the documentary shifts to Leuchter's discoveries at German concentration camps. His conclusions are stunning; he claims the rooms used for gassing and killing concentration camp workers were not gas chambers at all!!

This is where the film becomes really awesome and hair-raising. Here it discusses the trial that followed after the results and people reacting to Leuchter's odd behavior. Errol Morris does his best to give an objective viewpoint on the whole affair. He does not try to make Leuchter look like a devil or angel. It is surprising that a seemingly innocent and simple man like Leuchter could be caught up in such a gigantic controversy. Morris pretty much lets the viewer decide about this man. Worth the watch if one can find it.

What a peculiar and compelling documentary! Throughout the first part of this movie, Leuchter talks about his improvements upon various execution devices, and not with a little pride. He *says* he designs these things because the older devices are inhumane, that the electric chairs, for example, "cook" people, torture them, and that he wants to make executions as painless and quick as possible...and, you know, I believe him. He comes off as weird, but sincere.

His underground notoriety as an execution expert motivates holocaust revisionist "historian" Ernst Zündel to hire him to prove to a judge and jury that Nazis did not, in fact, exterminate Jews. So Leuchter goes to Auschwitz and--illegally--gathers samples from the "alleged" gas chambers, crematoriums, and so on. He smuggles these samples back to Canada, and a lab determines that they contain no traces of cyanide gas. Based on this--and this alone, apparently--Leuchter (an engineer, but by no means a research scientist) concludes that the gas chambers were never used to gas inmates, and that the holocaust did not happen.

Leuchter's evidence is easily refuted. It isn't the filmmaker's purpose to prove him wrong, and the refutation is quickly and easily accomplished without belaboring it. What is perhaps most interesting about this film is the manner in which it portrays Leuchter: He comes off as something of a stooge, a naive and terribly misguided participant in perhaps the most politically incorrect of all historical revisionism. As a result of this, he is mercilessly persecuted by people who will not tolerate the existence--let alone promulgation--of opposing points of view. Disagreement is decried as "hate," and in our current social environment, once you have successfully identified someone as a hatemonger, it's open season on him, In this sense, the film becomes a critical examination of a freedom we Americans claim to hold dear: the freedom of expression. It is a freedom that comes with a price, and that is that unpopular, often wacky, ideas will be promulgated by people we may not like. The fact is, though, that Leuchter is not an anti-semite. Morris does not show a man with an ounce of hatred in him, or malice, and so far as we can tell, there is no ideology behind Leuchter's belief that the holocaust did not occur. That Morris manages to show Leuchter in a reasonably sympathetic light forces us to examine the alactrity with which we so often attack and attempt to destroy the speaker of unpopular ideas, when perhaps all we really ought to do is attack the ideas that are being spoken. What makes us uncomfortable as viewers, I think, is that we feel sympathy for this guy. Clearly, he is the victim, more than the persecutor.

Like all of Errol Morris's work, there is more here than you first see. Things loop back on themselves, the obvious becomes fuzzy, and you end up with more questions than answers. For about the first 20 minutes, Mr. Leuchter offers chilling details about capital punishment -- the way it is done, the way it goes wrong, how the killing machines are made, and what happens to the human body when it is electrified. This is difficult to watch. There is an unbearable scene in which an elephant is electrified, writhing on the ground in pain, in a test for human electrification.

Leuchter's descriptions are disturbing, with his detached, scientific manner of explaining the mechanics of the devices. But his goal as an engineer is to make electric chairs more humane. There is such simplicity and honesty about the man, and he is consistent with his stated belief that he is "in favor of capital punishment" but is "not in favor of capital torture." This is how he justifies his work. As his reputation spreads, Leuchter starts getting hired to work on lethal injection machines, then on designing a gallows. Even he admits that this is outside his realm, since his only real area of expertise is electric chairs. However, he takes the jobs on these other killing machines, believing it is all simply engineering. Soon, you can see the humbleness turn to self-worth when Leuchter states that there are no other engineers in the world who know how to do what he does.

Leuchter's reputation soon lands him a job investigating Nazi atrocities in support of a Holocaust denier by the name of Ernst Z?ndel. Leuchter is hired to take samples of bricks and mortar (illegally) from Poland's concentration camps. Z?ndel is on trial in Canada for Holocaust-denial publications, and he wishes to use Leuchter's findings, and reputation, in his defense. As you watch Leuchter taking the brick and mortar samples, you see a man getting far beyond his league, a feeling compounded by experts who weigh in on the facts of the Holocaust. But Leuchter goes ahead with his "research," publishes conclusions that are scientifically unsound and politically offensive, conclusions that come to the aid of the Holocaust-denying Z?ndel. Leuchter's name is in the news. This simple man is suddenly known by millions of people around the world. His conclusions eventually contaminate every part of his professional and personal life.

Viewed from the surface, Mr. Leuchter should offend us, yet we feel sorry for him. As one of the interviewees in the movie says, what he is most guilty of is "criminal simplicity." Leuchter moves through the world trusting in simple details and simple conclusions, unable to imagine how these will be interpreted. He lends support to Holocaust denial, but doesn't see what he has done, stating childishly at one point, "I have a lot of Jewish friends." He is truly bewildered by the reactions people have to his work.

The way Leuchter talks about the gas machines the Nazis used is the same way he talks about his own work on death machines. He wonders why the Nazis would go to such trouble gassing people when they could just shoot them all or blow them all up. Leuchter seems unable to understand that the victims of Nazi concentration camps are not the equivalent of people on death row in America. His mind stays on the technical aspects of delivering death efficiently, not on the wrong or right of the matter.

Your feelings sway between pity, as one interviewee puts it, to anger, as when you see Leuchter doing a speech before an audience of Holocaust deniers, calling it a "myth." An average man suddenly thrust upon a stage where people hang on his every word, he gets caught up in his self-worth, as would many people. This makes it more difficult to judge him. Morris does an amazing job of exploring the gray zones of this story. Is Leuchter a bad guy, or was he just manipulated by more sophisticated and crafty people like Z?ndel?

The story hints at a subtle, but widespread, reaction to the Holocaust. Even people who accept that it happened are unable to get their minds around six million murders, and it is a predictable human response to feel that it "just doesn't make sense," as Leuchter puts it at one point.

The story is also a great investigation into ignorance and how people can latch onto a hypothesis, a proof, and then cease to question themselves. Leuchter never sways from his belief that chiseling hunks of bricks is an effective way to determine whether or not people were gassed by the Nazis. Once he determines that this is a legitimate test, he bases his entire "study" on the results. This ignorance destroys him, just as ignorance destroys a person or a society when left to grow unchecked.

Errol Morris does an excellent job of putting that ignorance on view for us to see and understand.

Errol Morris shows himself to be a master filmmaker - a great director, of storytelling, talent, photography, and editing. His film, "Mr. Death" is, to me, a "perfect" film. It's a singular work by one man (Mr. Morris), so consistent in his directorial, visual and editorial presentation, that no other filmmaker of the past or present (except perhaps Sydney Pollack, or Martin Scorcese) can touch him for being able to deliver a mood. With "Mr. Death", Mr. Morris shows himself to be so much more talented than egomaniacal directors with big budgets like James Cameron, for example. The film "Mr. Death" is great because, like the individual whose story is told, the film is perfectly off-center, running exactly parallel to everyday life. There's no doubt that Mr. Morris is a genius. With "Mr. Death", Mr. Morris does exactly what filmmaking needs someone to do - tell the strangest possible story with feature film-mood-quality in an editorially documentary style. Anyone who backs this guy's next project is doing filmmaking, and the art of social commentary a favor.