SIFF has the Werner Herzog film, “Rescue Dawn“. It stars Christian Bale as Dieter Dengler, a pilot shot down on his first mission in Vietnam. It was a rather conventional movie; I didn’t know that Werner Herzog knew how to make those.
I have seen many Werner Herzog films over the years, and he seems to make his role that of someone who is outside the mainstream looking in. I think that was an easy pose to make, as he has had to raise development money from many sources. He has made narrative fictional films, but they were often about him (and his battles with Klaus Kinski) as much as the films were about their subjects.
Perhaps because of budgetary constraints, Herzog had been making lyrical documentaries, films that looked objective on the surface, but were composed, much like a photographer may use models against a realistic backdrop to try to achieve an iconic look. “Glocken aus der Tiefe - Glaube und Aberglaube in Rußland” (”Bells from the Deep: Faith and Superstition in Russia”) is an example of such a movie. Herzog and a small crew went to Russia to record the rebirth of faith and superstition in Russia following the fall of Communism. The film shows many people resurrecting nativist beliefs to fill the vacuum left in their lives. One person was a dreamy young man who avoided saying anything directly about himself. He was dressed in an Orthodox monk’s garb, with a whispy beard. He implied that he was Jesus incarnated. During the Q & A after the film, Herzog said that this was just one of about 600 people known to be claiming the incarnation of Jesus.
Herzog filmed this story about Dieter Dengler before. He filmed it as a documentary in 1997 as “Little Dieter Needs to Fly“. Dieter Dengler was born in Germany in 1938. He witnessed the destruction of Germany during World War II. But he fell in love with airplanes and flying. He came to America at 18 and enlisted in the Air Force. After two years in the Air Force (spent doing menial work), he got out, got a degree by going to school at night and became a citizen. He joined the Navy to learn to fly and was sent to Vietnam. On his first mission, an interdiction flight into Laos, he was shot down, was eventually captured, tortured and sent to a prison camp. He escaped the camp and made his way through the Laotian jungle toward Thailand. He was eventually rescued. Herzog’s initial film, which I have not seen, took Dengler back to South East Asia. At one point, Dengler was bound with ropes the way he had been bound in captivity. Evidently, Herzog finds pushing people past their boundaries to be an uplifting experience.
Herzog’s narrative fiction movie, “Rescue Dawn”, tells the story of Lt. Dengler leaving the air craft carrier, getting shot down, being captured, being tortured, inspiring his jail mates to escape, escaping, evading capture, being rescued in a very straight forward way. There are no cliches, no easy hand holds, in this film. It is claustrophobic. There were times that I felt crushed while watching this movie. I wanted to flee the theater. In that sense, Herzog did his job of delivering the vicarious goods. After Lt. Dengler is returned to his ship, he gets a microphone shoved in his face and is expected to say something profound and uplifting. He can not. He says something that while appearing trite and superficial, is probably keeping in the way that people who endure great hard ship express themselves.
Christian Bale, as Dieter Dengler, continues to grow. I didn’t know that he was in the film (I picked it because of Herzog and schedule considerations) and was delighted to see his name in the opening credits. I don’t know how many audience members were aware of Bale’s first major motion picture, “Empire of the Sun“. That was not far from my mind as watched this movie. He has been in some high profile movies, e.g., “Batman Begins”, “Shaft”, “American Psycho”, but I have like the other films more, e.g., “Metroland”, “Velvet Goldmine”, and one of the best from the last ten years, “Laurel Canyon“. (I see that he has been cast opposite Russell Crowe in a remake of “3.10 to Yuma”, a classic revisionist Western. The original was filled with Elmore Leonard’s Christ imagery; I don’t know what they plan to do for a remake.)
In the roles I most liked, Christian Bale, like Joaquin Phoenix, saves the fireworks for when it counts. In “Laurel Canyon”, we get a palpable sense of the inner conflict that rages in him. When it finally releases, we are ready for it, and it is a controlled release. The film closes with some images that show the still unresolved boy in the man, still looking for the love that he didn’t get from his mother, and his mother’s visceral but hapless indifference to his need.
In this film, Bale gives us some hints of the stranger-in-a-strange-land that Dengler must have experienced. When Dengler came to America in 1956, we were still in love with our victory over Germany in World War II. How strange it must have been for young Dengler to see movies showing ruthless Germans and the morally superior Everyman GI, vouchsafed merely by being an American. War is not like that; soldiers are not like that. He was aided, no doubt, by the direction of Herzog, who revels in that stranger-strangeland feel, and seeks to create it wherever he goes.
The movie does not dwell on the feeling of being tested that Dengler must have felt. This is a staple of movies about military themes, but Herzog doesn’t go there. This is a very internal thing, being tested, and there are no easy ways of showing it. Movies are about showing. What Herzog does show us is the brotherhood the pilots feel and gives us one of their preflight rituals. When you are all alone in combat, I think that is one of the things you remember, the brotherhood rituals.
Dengler is shot down. We don’t know that much about his life to this point, so trying to arc back to his childhood in Germany wouldn’t work. Other films do that, but this one doesn’t. There are not talismans from the childhood village that make the trip to a jungle in Laos, pulled out and caressed to show this arc. Maudlin is missing.
After a lot of torture, Dengler ends up in a small prison camp where his principal interactions are with Eugene, from Eugene, Oregon, a slightly mad captive, played superbly by Jeremy Davies (unrecognizable as Upham of “Saving Private Ryan”), and Duane Martin, played well by Steve Zahn. Duane has his weaknesses and Zahn delivers them, along with his strengths. Playing weak is always harder than playing strong, and Davies and Zahn are great at it in this film.
When Dengler arrives at the camp, he is in good health and has not had his spirit broken. It is not clear just how much spirit the other captives have left, and Dengler must find out. He is initially dismayed by the lack of hope in his fellow prisoners. The narrative questions that often arise in this kind of movie are “Will someone snitch? How will he keep his edge and not give in?” These questions are created by screenwriters who are trying to create conflict and lack imagination into what really happens in a prisoner of war camp. Herzog, as the screenwriter, gives us instead images of Dengler that illustrate his perseverance and inventiveness in the face of abject power.
The main dramatic conflict in the movie happens in the camp, where Dengler must convince his co-captives to escape. In many movies, this would be the whole movie, with abortive escapes, a lesson learned and then a final escape. But the men must wait for monsoon season to arrive so that they can get water to drink. They wait. Dengler gains the trust of his co-captives by easing their plight, and it is clear that he is a sparkplug for this combustion.
The combustion, when it happens, is predictable, but it fits the story. Dengler escapes and we follow the path of Dengler and Duane. We get a sense of the love that can exist between two men, described by Philip Caputo in “A Rumor Of War” as being closer than that of lovers, for it is a bond that is truly broken only by death. Dengler nurses Duane along as Duane, already weakened before the escape, slips further and further.
This is a movie on linear narrative rails, and that is not a bad thing. Herzog has stripped the sentimentality from this kind of film, and Bale delivers a controlled portrayal of hope and perseverance.