Blog From The Bench

I’m not entirely sure what it is that inspired Werner Herzog the retell the story of Naval Pilot Dieter Dengler in Rescue Dawn. It had been told quite effectively in Herzog’s own documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Upon further review regarding Dieter’s story, Herzog says on the film’s official site that “Dieter Dengler embodied everything I love about America: courage, perseverance, optimism, self-reliance, frontier spirit, loyalty and joy of life. He was the quintessential immigrant into America – a young man who arrived with a great dream and came to represent the best of the American spirit.”

For those unfamiliar with the basic outlines of the documentary and the man, Dengler (Christian Bale, Batman Begins) was an immigrant who had a boyhood dream of wanting to be a fighter pilot, and he graduated school in Germany and came to America with only thirty cents and the desire to fly. On his first flight in the Vietnam War, conducted in parts of Laos, he is shot down and captured. After some tortuous sequences, he is sent to a POW camp, where he meets Gene (Jeremy Davies, Saving Private Ryan) and Duane (Steve Zahn, Out of Sight). Both have been in camp for at least a year, bearing in mind that the conflict still hadn’t escalated when Dengler had been shot down. While Gene is convinced that there is progress being made towards a release, Duane is more resigned to not being able to leave the camp. Within a short period of time, Dieter manages to craft a lockpicking device out of a nail, so as to give the boys some freedom in the evenings, as they were handcuffed together, their feet held by wooden blocks. Dieter helps plan an escape for the men, which eventually does manage to occur, and they are sprung into the Laotian jungle to try and find friendly rescue forces. For those who scream “spoiler”, you can’t really spoil real life, so nerts to you.

For those who are familiar with the story from the documentary, you might be surprised to see the dark nature of the interactions of those in the camp. Dengler himself told Herzog that these men were almost willing to kill, as tensions frequently ran high. It is the major difference between the documentary and the film, which in the beginning, does state that it’s “inspired” by the events in Dengler’s life. Also, the previous escape attempts that Dengler attempted is ignored, rather, combining those events into one larger attempt is the more logical decision to make. Past those differences, everything remains pretty true to the events.

Many things strike me about this movie, the first being that Batman himself is very daring in the nature of his acting choices. In between The Machinist and his anorexic frame, his bulking up for Batman Begins and to lose it again for Rescue Dawn, he consumes himself into a role and devotes himself to it. He plays a man who has no quarrel with the Vietnamese, he is simply devoted to the country that gave him a chance at his dream. And coming from Hitler’s Germany, he knows what oppression is, and says so when offered the chance to admit to his “war crimes” as a propaganda ploy. And if you think he doesn’t do any heavy lifting, think again. His feet are tied to one end of a rope, the other end securing to a running water buffalo, whereupon Bale is dragged through the dirt while villagers kick and throw things at him. He has an anthill tied to his upper torso, and is dunked in a claustrophobic tank that fills to the neck. He’s doing all the work for this role, and it gives it much more believability than a lot of roles out there, and I haven’t listed everything he did. However in this film, Zahn’s performance is clearly the best. He plays someone who people know very little about, and does it with staggering surrender. When he starts to show signs of hope, it’s touching and heartbreaking at once. His performance is worthy of Oscar recognition next year, anything less would be criminal. He, Bale and especially Davies have lost an extraordinary amount of wait for their roles, it is staggering to see how skeletal they are in the film.

Is it “just another war film”? It’s a film set in Vietnam, for sure, but those who have asked if it’s pro or anti war are missing the point. Above all else, it’s about surviving extreme circumstances. Several scenes show Bale cutting through the jungle with a machete, with Herzog (or his longtime cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger) just over his shoulder. The brush and vines are that strong and that thick, and if it helps show just how hard Dengler had to get back to freedom, then its time well spent. The film is a compelling look at a harrowing experience, and it deserves to be seen by many people (MGM/Sony waited three and a half unexplainable weeks after its limited release, but it averaged over $3,000 a screen on less than 500, so here’s hoping that changes).

A quick sidebar on Dengler. The man truly led a full life, with many close-calls and near-death experiences. He says in the documentary that “death did not want him”, and closer examination shows just how much that was true. When he was found, he lost a third of his weight and was less than 100 pounds; when found and examined on the helicopter, he had a half-eaten snake in his pocket that scared the man who found it so much he almost fell out of the chopper. After his military career he remained a test pilot, surviving four more plane crashes. He had to abandon ship in rough seas when helming a boat. He died from ALS complications in 2001 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery (where most of this biographical information was found).

Score – 95