Haggisboy
04-08-2007, 10:17 AM
Rescue Dawn marks German director Werner Herzog’s second visit to the story of Dieter Dengler, a German-American fighter pilot who was the sole surviving member of a mass escape from a Vietnam war era Pathet Lao prison camp in Laos.
In 1997 Herzog helmed a documentary for German television titled Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Both Herzog and Dengler were products of an early post war Germany that struggled to escape the rubble and impoverishment of the failed Nazi regime. Whereas Herzog sought refuge in the world of film, Dengler became fascinated with the idea of becoming a fighter pilot after witnessing American planes attacking his village as a boy. He went on to emigrate to the United States and become a fighter pilot with the US Navy. In 1966, while taking part in a covert bombing mission to disrupt Viet Cong supply lines behind the Laotian border, Dengler’s single engine Skyraider was hit by anti-aircraft fire and he was forced to crash land. Shortly thereafter he was captured by communist Pathet Lao troops allied to the Viet Cong.
Rescue Dawn dramatically recounts Dengler’s (Christian Bale) capture and torture at the hands of the Pathet Lao, where he established himself as a stabilizing focus for a disparate band of American and South Vietnamese captives already half wonky from months or years of imprisonment. From there he masterminded their escape from the camp and braved the ardors of the jungle with fellow American Duane Martin (Steve Zahn) as they sought rescue.
As a vehicle for layered film critiques, Rescue Dawn marks Herzog’s return to his glory days of such engrossing and controversial works as Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. Initially I viewed it as a flaw that Herzog opted not to delve, even briefly, into Dengler’s childhood upbringing by his grandparents, whose opposition to Hitler caused them to be declared a political enemy of the Nazi party, thinking this would have lent greater weight to the captured Dengler’s refusal to sign a Viet Cong declaration denouncing the American regime which would potentially have garnered him a quick release. This omission, however, might well have been deliberate by Herzog to show how Dengler was more a product of his adoptive country and the opportunities it provided, than of his past.
Herzog’s casting choices are equally impressive for their willingness to subjugate their bodies for their roles. Christian Bale’s body-altering weight loss extremes of The Machinist are echoed by virtually every actor portraying a prisoner of the Pathet Lao. Its remarkable how these guys were able to survive even the rigors of a jungle movie shoot, given that they’d reduced their bodies to shear skin and bone for the production.
For all the on-screen torture, starvation and punishment endured by Bale and Zahn, Herzog could easily have opted to title this movie “Triumph of the Will to Survive”, in homage to fellow German film maker Leni Riefenstahl.
In a summer season dominated by animated cooking rats, transforming robots, flying dogs and wizards and spells, Rescue Dawn manages to drive home the point that everything from scraps of rice to a candy bar all the way through to those lofty ideals and aspirations that define us as human beings are vital, essential, and not to be trivialized, and weren’t for Dieter Dengler.
In 1997 Herzog helmed a documentary for German television titled Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Both Herzog and Dengler were products of an early post war Germany that struggled to escape the rubble and impoverishment of the failed Nazi regime. Whereas Herzog sought refuge in the world of film, Dengler became fascinated with the idea of becoming a fighter pilot after witnessing American planes attacking his village as a boy. He went on to emigrate to the United States and become a fighter pilot with the US Navy. In 1966, while taking part in a covert bombing mission to disrupt Viet Cong supply lines behind the Laotian border, Dengler’s single engine Skyraider was hit by anti-aircraft fire and he was forced to crash land. Shortly thereafter he was captured by communist Pathet Lao troops allied to the Viet Cong.
Rescue Dawn dramatically recounts Dengler’s (Christian Bale) capture and torture at the hands of the Pathet Lao, where he established himself as a stabilizing focus for a disparate band of American and South Vietnamese captives already half wonky from months or years of imprisonment. From there he masterminded their escape from the camp and braved the ardors of the jungle with fellow American Duane Martin (Steve Zahn) as they sought rescue.
As a vehicle for layered film critiques, Rescue Dawn marks Herzog’s return to his glory days of such engrossing and controversial works as Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. Initially I viewed it as a flaw that Herzog opted not to delve, even briefly, into Dengler’s childhood upbringing by his grandparents, whose opposition to Hitler caused them to be declared a political enemy of the Nazi party, thinking this would have lent greater weight to the captured Dengler’s refusal to sign a Viet Cong declaration denouncing the American regime which would potentially have garnered him a quick release. This omission, however, might well have been deliberate by Herzog to show how Dengler was more a product of his adoptive country and the opportunities it provided, than of his past.
Herzog’s casting choices are equally impressive for their willingness to subjugate their bodies for their roles. Christian Bale’s body-altering weight loss extremes of The Machinist are echoed by virtually every actor portraying a prisoner of the Pathet Lao. Its remarkable how these guys were able to survive even the rigors of a jungle movie shoot, given that they’d reduced their bodies to shear skin and bone for the production.
For all the on-screen torture, starvation and punishment endured by Bale and Zahn, Herzog could easily have opted to title this movie “Triumph of the Will to Survive”, in homage to fellow German film maker Leni Riefenstahl.
In a summer season dominated by animated cooking rats, transforming robots, flying dogs and wizards and spells, Rescue Dawn manages to drive home the point that everything from scraps of rice to a candy bar all the way through to those lofty ideals and aspirations that define us as human beings are vital, essential, and not to be trivialized, and weren’t for Dieter Dengler.