SEPTEMBER 16, 1999
A superb visual stylist
By Stephen Cole
National Post
FILM REVIEW
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr.
* * * * 1/2
Directed by: Errol Morris
Produced by: David Collins, Michael Williams, Dorothy Aufiero
Cinematography: Peter Donahue, Robert Richardson
Program: Special Presentation
At once a chilling glimpse of what journalist/historian Ron Rosenbaum has termed the borderline that exists between sinister innocence and criminal simplicity, and a precise, exquisitely rendered piece of filmmaking, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. is a commanding, memorable work.
First, but perhaps not foremost, it is a diligent and persuasive piece of documentary reportage. Morris has accumulated a wide variety of materials that offer insight into subject
Fred Leuchter's sad, curious life. Home movies of Fred romping through correctional services as a kid, or goofing around in an electric chair as an older child (he never seems to have quite grown up), offer penetrating insight into a man who might walk into a concentration camp as if he were out for a stroll in the park.
And Morris succinctly disproves Leuchter's notorious report by doing something no one else bothered to do: going to the chemist who performed the tests Leuchter concluded offered proof there was no cyanide in the walls of Auschwitz (and therefore no Holocaust).
The tests, the chemist tells him, were invalid because cyanide would have only been evident in the face of the bricks gathered from the German concentration camp.
And, the samples he examined were pulverized before testing, diluting whatever materials were present on the surface by upwards of 10,000%.
But it is an impressionistic, oddly poetic rendering of Leuchter's strange odyssey that Mr. Death leaves its most lasting impression.
The director clearly has a novelist's fascination with language and the ways characters reveal themselves in speech.
At times the defeated twang of Leuchter's and his wife's voices achieve the poignance of a Raymond Carver short story. In addition, Morris is a superb visual stylist with a distinct flair for surrealistic flourishes.
At its best, his new film feels like it is being revealed to you in an overwhelming dream. |
