This approach, of using the interview itself in the way that most directors use a screenplay, may be the key to what sets Morris' films apart from others, fiction and non-fiction. He effectively combines the elements of reality of documentary film with the studio shots, props, and visual artistry of pre-written productions.

Of whether his efforts have succeeded in communicating what he hopes to communicate, Morris says, "I somehow feel I've just started. I'm still excited by all kinds of filmmaking. I think I have made interesting films, different and complex films. I sometimes think of a lot of current filmmaking as incredibly unambitious, and sometimes as devoid of any ambition at all. And that seems sad, because they're so much you can do."

Mr. Death

"Mr. Death," Errol Morris' new film, is subtitled "The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.," a formidable label that seems to imply a sort of melodrama that, while dramatic and intensely emotional, the work never really approaches. Instead, it is the disturbing, offbeat, and darkly comic story of Leuchter, a self-taught expert in execution equipment who travels to Auschwitz in order to prove that the holocaust never really occurred.

The project came about when Morris was preparing to shoot his interviews for "Fast, Cheap, and out of Control." This was the first time that he had used his Interrotron, a device of two-way mirrors and video equipment that allows his subjects to speak to him while looking directly into his video image while he does the same. This device is responsible for the way his subjects look directly into the camera, an innovation that gives lends his films a more personal quality. He needed a subject for a throwaway interview to test the machine before he began shooting the others, and Leuchter, who Morris always refers to as Fred, was that subject.

The interview was a success, one of the best Morris had ever done, in part thanks to what he has dubbed "the TV set that cares, the TV set that wants to find out more about you." Nevertheless, several years passed during which the filmmaker was alternately consumed by other projects and unable to secure the money needed for what was clearly a risky project. When funding did arrive, Morris returned to Auschwitz to recreate parts of Leuchter's journey and interviewed him again, recording many more hours of an older, if not wiser, Fred.

Although the action of the film is Fred's story, his "rise" to being a successful execution technologist and his "fall" to being discredited, poor, and alone, the force at work the surface is thematic examination of the man's character, and what that character represents in a broader context. "I think the central idea is influenced by Nabokov, who probably more than anyone else conceived this idea of the self-deceived, clueless narrator. Think of Pale Fire and Lolita. These are narrators who have no idea whatsoever of what's going on. Fred is certainly an example of that kind of clueless narrator."

The interviews that form the core of "Mr. Death" are strikingly non-judgmental, allowing the audience to make up its own mind about Leuchter based on the words that he wants them to hear. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, Morris himself has few doubts about his subject. "My only claim on behalf of Fred," he muses, "is that I find Fred interesting, and that there are likeable aspects to Fred's personality. This is not to say that I think Fred is a good person, or that what he has done is a good thing. I think that he's done terrible things. The trip to Auschwitz itself was an abomination, and what followed was worse. But we have this fantasy that confronted with really, truly evil things, that there should be some kind of evil character waiting in the wings, responsible for these acts of malefaction-an Iago, or a Lady Macbeth, or a Richard III. And the surprise is, Fred just seems pathetic, self-deceived, ordinary. Is he truly monstrous, is he hiding something? Does he know full well what he's doing? Or is he a kind of self-deceived, vain, in many ways self-satisfied, moral fool?"

Leuchter, who Morris believes is honestly not an anti-Semite, appears confused and frightened by other people's responses to his actions, but he remains confident in that he did the right thing. "There's nothing in the movie that made him change his views in any way," the director says. "I gave him a laundry list of all the reasons why I thought he was wrong, and you know what he said? 'Even so, I think I'm right.' If you want to hold a belief, I mean really hold a belief, there is no evidence that can force you to abandon that view. That's not a position on rationality, but it's a position on human nature."