After viewing, you want to analyze many topics. It seems to be a relatively short film, which contains a huge number of aspects of life. Experiences and thoughts go deep into philosophical, political and psychological topics.
In my opinion, this is the best role of Timothy Spall. It’s a shame that this actor plays mostly comic characters when he can perform incredibly dramatic characters. The whole cast plays very well. No one overplays and everyone believes and feels his emotions. Excellent directing and camera work makes this film deep and multifaceted. Separate praise for how impartially, without any emotional attitude, such a profession as an executioner was shown.
Through the prism of the executioner’s personality, it was shown the change of values of the British, and perhaps the whole world, to such a phenomenon as death, after such an event as war. A people obsessed with revenge idolized and embraced Pirpoint as a national hero after his work in Germany. At that moment, the familiar world and the attitude of the main character to his work were shaken. Massiveness - in the perception of people always becomes something amazing and shocking. Take plane crashes or natural disasters like tsunamis.
After such a mass death phenomenon as war, the vector of people’s views changes dramatically. Life takes on value. There are demonstrations about the abolition of the death penalty, and when Ruth Ellis is executed, the people explode. At first I thought it was something like a double agent Nazi or some other enemy of the state, but after Googled it turned out that it was just a woman who killed her lover.
And also after the war, in the new world, questions of morality again arise, as did the question of the death penalty.
Does it deter crime? Or does it make them? Is it humanizing or dehumanizing society? And how do we perceive a capital punishment apparatus that carries under it many executors who carry out the decisions of the state? How accurate is this justice and how many innocent people have been convicted? Is there an alternative to life imprisonment?
This raises the question of what a person is. What is the value of his life? What are your motives and excuses?
And these are just the most superficial questions and reflections that appear after watching. The tip of the iceberg.
I don't want to reveal the subtleties of the story.
Victory, peace, freedom, and many other “demons” are phenomena of the same order. It is very profitable to engage in art on the wave of this or that hysteria and it is very difficult not taking sides, to build your own position. The story of the last executioner is a fiction, a shadow of the truth. However, in the case of many documentary films shot from a certain angle, this film pretends to be objective.
For an hour and a half calmly and measuredly, the director is paired with the screenwriter, talking about a lively, though little emotional person living among dummies and slogans. It is profitable to hang the Germans - we shout: "Hurrah!" It is not profitable to hang your compatriots’ criminals – we shout “Ugh!!!” Who are all the dogs hanging on? The executioner! Someone who just knows how to do their job. He didn't kill anyone, he just executed the sentence. I tried to do it quickly and painlessly.
But people shouting from everywhere wanted him to take on the sins of others.
Do your job, and I'll do mine. And tomorrow I will sleep peacefully, as always.
Once in school, a teacher asked the students the traditional question "Who do you want to be?", Albert without hesitation answered: "I want to be an executioner."
Adrian Shergold, from his directorial chair, brought to the screen one of the touching and humanitarian films that I happened to see. The biographical drama about the life and work of the most famous executioner of the XX century Henry Pierrpoint became truly triumphant for the talented British actor Timothy Spall, whose acting skills vividly pierced this unusual film.
People with faint hearts shudder at the very word “executioner.” In their imagination it is a dark, bloodthirsty creature, a kind of villain, cold-blooded taking the lives of his fellow men, and they think he is haunted by the ghosts of the victims. Yes, I've hanged over a hundred people, but no ghosts of victims have haunted me so far. As for bloodlust, I have a charming wife and children, so ask them if I look like a ferocious villain in any way. /Henry Pierrpoint/
What do they want, Albert? Let them shout all they want, Georgie. Do your job and I'll do mine. And tomorrow I will sleep peacefully, as always.
Only one thing matters. Height, weight and physical strength. Self-control and strength of character. All this with unflappable acting prudence and with truly Stanislavsky penetrating showed Timothy Spall. His hero was endowed with a spiritual love of humanity, which was an integral part of his character, like belts and rope.
He took his duties seriously and made many improvements in the matter of transferring a person to the next world. Albert believed that the most terrible and humiliating moment for a convict is the path to the place of execution, and tried to reduce this time to a minimum. Albert Pierrpoint has gained a reputation as the fastest executioner in the world. The entire execution procedure, from the procession from the death row to the scaffold in the next room, tying the legs, throwing a white hood over the head and up to pressing the lever opening the hatch, Albert conducted in record time - from 9 to 12 seconds.
This movie is about a man who sets in motion the most productive, humane, elegant way of death sentence. Apotheosis of the British justice system.
The execution of war criminals is one of the moments when the entire professionalism of the executioner was revealed, his tactfulness, decency and humanity. Timothy immaculately, as his hero performed “from and to” the mise-en-scene of the famous execution. His calculated movements, facial expressions and, most importantly, his eyes, acted in accordance with his principles.
I believed that a sense of detachment was necessary for the executioner... I myself have always tried not to treat the condemned emotionally, not to go into the details of the crime he was charged with, or to weigh the arguments in favor of his guilt or innocence. Who am I to judge? I could not change his fate, and all I could do was treat him humanly if possible.” But in front of these Belzen monsters, a sense of detachment changed Alberta. “Never in my practice have I seen a more miserable crowd of convicts. I knew of their monstrous crimes and yet could not help feeling pity for the crowd. When I told one of the English soldiers about this, he replied, "If you were in Belzen, you would not have pity on them." Among the convicts were three women: Irma Gres, who whipped to death up to 30 people a day, Julia Borman, nicknamed Woman with Dogs, who at her tip ripped prisoners apart, Elizabeth Volkenrath, who selected people for gas chambers. “Women forward,” Pierrepoint commanded, standing on the scaffold, to reduce the anguish of waiting for them.
"Dear citizen." Lovely husband. Professional executioner. The concise slogan for the film is more than informative to characterize one of the best biographical dramas of recent times.
The inhabitants of Crichton knew perfectly well what the Pierrepoints were doing, but they took it simply: someone must administer justice and hang murderers, robbers, rapists and other scum of the human race. A profession as a profession is neither worse nor better than any other.”
It's mine for me, too. I am grateful for the opportunity to get acquainted with the history of a truly interesting person, who was so brilliantly played by British actor Timothy Spall.
10 out of 10
The issue of the death penalty has long divided people into two camps for and against it. Hugo, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, even our contemporary Stephen King wrote about the execution. No less burning question than “what does the criminal feel in the last minutes of life?” is the question “what does the executioner feel?”
Albert Pierpoint is a famous English executioner who has 400 to over 600 executed people. The director Adrian Shergold had a seemingly simple job - to make an autobiographical film for a person and his profession, but at the same time a great talent is needed not to denigrate and ennoble the prototype of the character in such a difficult topic, to try to convey the image of the real Albert Pierpoint.
Thanks to books about the horrors of the Middle Ages, we are used to seeing an executioner in a cap and always laughing at people dying at his fingertips. But the executioner is actually a simple man, husband, friend, caring citizen. Albert Pierpoint, hanging a terrible criminal or a concentration camp guard, always understands that a man stands before him, and he ... must be only an instrument in the hands of the state.
At times, the film is cynical, the atmosphere is depressed, the color scheme is reproduced in gray, black, greenish-dark shades. First, there is no rainbow in prison dungeons. Secondly, faced with the death of people, willfully or unwittingly you will be with oppressive thoughts. The film is fully focused on the experiences and feelings of the main character, about any other, foreign things can not go — only the executioner and sentenced to death.
I'm very excited about Timothy Spall's work. Before The Executioner, I only saw him as the funny and ridiculous Peter Petigrew of Harry Potter, Nathaniel of Charmed, Mr. Poe of Lemony Snicket. But in "The Executioner" before us is no longer a comic character, but a real, sincere person.
“The Last Executioner” is not a film about those sentenced to death, but about those who send them to the next world and how he feels. It is impossible to shout for the abolition of the death penalty when right now there are criminals who have killed thousands of people in the camps. But confidence is shaken when they bring their best friend to the platform.
9 out of 10
Adrian Shergold's film The Last Executioner tells the story of 23 years in the life of Britain's most famous executioner since Jack Ketch.
Albert Pierpoint, as it has been with executioners since ancient times, followed in the footsteps of his father and uncle and in 1932 received the qualification of an assistant executioner, and in 1941 became the chief executioner. Finding his true vocation in this occupation, making hanging a kind of art, this man carried out at least 435 death sentences (the official figure).
In the film, Pierpoint is portrayed as a man with an amazing psyche - for him, hanging was nothing more than a job to do. To him, death row prisoners were nothing more than material to work with. Albert did not need, like his assistants, to know the history of the accused in order to avoid moral torment - after the execution of the sentence, the executioner could calmly talk about the technical aspects of the execution with a cigar in his hands, and sleep at night as a baby. Even Pirpoint’s outrage at the absence of a coffin for the hanged person does not seem to be an indicator of his humanity, but rather a pedantic executor in the performance of his duties – everything must be done as it should be, everything must be in order.
Without this attitude to his work and to life in general, without the ability to abstract from reality, Albert Pierpoint would never have become what he became. And he became the N1 executioner in England - constantly improving, Pierpoint managed to make the execution much faster and painless for the criminal, and in 1951 he set the "speed record" recorded in the Guinness Book of Records - the execution of James Inglis in 7.5 seconds (the time between the exit of Inglis from the cell and the opening of the hatch under his feet).
It should be noted that Pierpoint is incredibly lucky in his personal life - as a few can be executioners, so only a select few can become their wives. Fortunately for Albert, he met such a man on his way to life.
After World War II, Pierpoint was “honored” to execute Nazi criminals (some 200 of them) – and this was the turning point in his life. In the English press leaked information about the identity of the executioner, and for some time Pierpoint became even a national hero and significantly improved his financial situation. But as the post-war thirst for revenge subsided and the first emotions subsided, society began to learn the lessons of the terrible war and rethink many things and values that had previously seemed unshakable (human life, for example) – voices began to be heard about the abolition of the death penalty and every year these voices became louder. As a result, death sentences were becoming less and less, sometimes executions were canceled at the very last minute, which caused tangible financial problems for Pierpoint - all this, against the background of constant condemnations of society, led to the first in the history of England petition for the resignation of the executioner (expulsion from the list of executors).
Much of the film focuses not on the executioner’s extraordinary personality, but on the execution procedure itself, historical moments, and society’s acceptance of it all. But the viewer does not see how Pierpoint became a man who executed hundreds of people - perhaps the upbringing of the executioner in the family (although the mother was not happy with the choice of her son), or maybe the breed of these Pierpoints is such. But, in any case, Albert does not seem to be some inhuman monster and murderer, but rather he is the instrument so necessary to the Society at that time, the unflappable, dispassionate instrument which was the result of the development of English society in the mid-twentieth century. And when the need for this weapon disappeared, the executioner calmly retired. Thus, through the prism of the fate of Albert Pierpoint, the mores and values of the British of that time are shown.
The ending of the film, which differs from the measured and slow narrative at the beginning by a certain haste and haste, tries to reveal the soul of the executioner through a story invented by the creators for drama (without this, any movie is not a movie) about the execution of his best friend. Perhaps the film’s acceleration at the end is an allusion to the execution process itself, when everything must go as quickly as possible so that the criminal does not have time to come to his senses.
Albert Pierpoint was not the last executioner in the United Kingdom, and those sentenced to death were executed in the United Kingdom until 1964.
Have you ever wondered why people who have made a vow most often try to retire physically, become a hermit or go to a monastery? A person takes on obligations without coercion, decides on voluntary self-restraint. So why would he run away from society? This happens because a person understands that the “cap” of beliefs with which he has surrounded himself is perhaps not as impenetrable as he would like, and not so strong, and can be destroyed by the voluntary or involuntary participation of people concerned with him.
The hero of this film, hereditary executioner Albert Pierpoint surrounded himself with just such a “cap” of beliefs. Having become the third executioner in the family, he was able to abstract from any moral assessment of his actions or the causes that led to the death of those executed by hanging. Pierrepoint, entering the death row, left Pierrepoint behind the doors. Only the executioner, a professional in his field, entered the cell, who saw not a person in front of him, but a body of appropriate weight and height. His professional pride led Albert to set the record for the fastest execution. And it is for the same reason that he did not allow the bodies of those executed to be treated without due respect. No one in the entourage knew about the secret activities of a respected grocery supplier and therefore could not damage his shield. The wife, too, did not threaten to break through the defense, wisely suggesting that she simply hush up her husband's work. And in these circumstances, the man found enough reason to be proud of himself.
I must say that Timothy Spall not only looks like his hero, but also perfectly conveyed this duality of his personality. In everyday life, he is one of dozens of respectable citizens who love to have fun over a glass, and in prison he is an impassive ideal performer.
But the first breach in the fortress of the executioner broke, oddly enough, the execution of people clearly guilty: Nazi criminals. First, a huge number of victims violated the usual ritual, and then the fact that Pierrepoint clearly saw that it was used only as a weapon of revenge by those people who do not have the courage to press the lever themselves, those who close their eyes when the person they hate dies. And then suddenly on his sharply became thinner “cap” began to press on all sides of public opinion. I take it that the fact that the executioner was recognized in the face of society is in itself against the rules. And already this violation of the usual way of life became detrimental to the hero of the film. It doesn’t matter what people’s attitudes are. Whether admiration or hatred, both encouraged Albert to see ordinary people instead of bodies of certain sizes. And if Pierrepoint had ended his career in the Nazi trial, he would have been able to restore his inner balance, because as long as he was only in doubt, there was no conviction that he was wrong. But then the only one, as he considered close to him a person, his wife did not want to understand his wife, because money will become less if he quits his job.
But then in the film followed, obviously, the strongest moment, according to Adrian Shergold, the creator of the film, and in my opinion the weakest and most predictable. The execution of a soft-bodied and emotional friend, who was reliably played by Eddie Marsan, forces the executioner to look into the eyes of the condemned to death, to see in him a person close and unhappy, which makes Albert’s psychological defenses completely capitulate. And then again, the wife disassembles the last stones of his protective walls, clearly showing that he is unable not to judge his husband, and makes this man a completely unhappy person. The creators wanted these scenes to add stories of drama and relevance, apparently, because the executioner himself did not experience such passions inside himself. Of course, he began to think about the expediency of his work and its inner content, but certainly did not go crazy. Rather, he was visited by the usual thoughts of a “narrow” specialist who, after many years of doing the same thing, begins to understand it more deeply and cannot avoid a critical attitude to the profession. And the director decided to put his thoughts into the hero’s head for clarity. Let it be on his conscience. .
But after watching this film, you involuntarily think about how amazingly sometimes human fates develop. It took Albert Pierpoint to hang more than 600 people to realize that execution does not really atone for anyone’s sins.