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

Fred Leuchter designs execution equipment in the United States. He repairs electric chairs, builds gallows and lethal injection systems, and thinks of himself as a humane engineer on the grounds that if he does the work well the dying will hurt less. Then he is sent to Auschwitz as an expert witness in the case of a Holocaust denier, writes a report from samples he chipped off the walls, and claims the gas chambers were never used. Errol Morris does not build the film as a refutation. He lets Leuchter talk, and in explaining himself the man narrates his own collapse: how far somebody with no expertise at all can travel on the pleasure of being taken seriously for the first time. The real subject is not Holocaust denial but a person's belief in his own competence. The section where an actual chemist calmly explains why the samples were meaningless is the most devastating passage in it. Who it is for: admirers of Morris and of films about self deception. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a direct rebuttal of the claims.