Cinema: Mr. Death: The Rise And Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter Jr.

DIRECTOR: Errol Morris OPENS: Dec. 29 in N.Y.C. and L.A.; wide in Jan.

To do good you don’t need a graduate degree, just a smart idea. To do harm you don’t need bad intentions, just a plodding arrogance. Those truisms are at the heart of the latest documentary enthraller from artful Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, A Short History of Time). Fred Leuchter won renown for devising more “humane” electric chairs, gallows and gas chambers. Now considered an expert in all aspects of state torture, Leuchter was hired by Ernst Zundel, a prominent denier of the Holocaust, to use his expertise to determine if the Nazi concentration camps had in fact been death camps. Leuchter went to Auschwitz with his bride (it was their honeymoon!) and discovered no trace of cyanide. His methods were faulty, his conclusions inane. He was discredited and, suddenly, unemployed.

Morris, an elegant and scrupulous filmmaker, is fair both to Leuchter and his aggrieved accusers. The movie makes clear that Mr. Death’s sin was not race hatred but hubris; he simply could not, does not, doubt his qualifications to do a job beyond his expertise. Morris takes this quietly agitated fellow (he consumes about 40 cups of coffee and 100 cigarettes a day) at face value, letting Leuchter explain how tinkering with science led to his rise and fall. It’s the fascinating film equivalent of a humane execution.

–R.C.