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In masterpieces such as "Fitzcarraldo" and "Aguirre: The Wrath of God," director Werner Herzog has visited the themes and the locales of "Rescue Dawn," his first Hollywood feature film. The locale is the jungle and the theme is the madness that results from isolation and deprivation. This time, though, Herzog’s main character, Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), doesn’t go completely mad but he seems half way around the bend by the time his story ends.
Herzog has even visited this exact story before, in his 1997 documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly," in which the 60-year-old Dengler tells Herzog his life story, including his being shot down over Laos in 1966, his capture by the Pathet Lao, his imprisonment in a POW camp during which his weight dipped to 85 pounds, his escape and his survival through monsoons, leeches and machete wielding villagers. "Rescue Dawn" is Herzog’s dramatization of this story, although Herzog’s brilliance here is that he manages to make the dramatization seem more real than the documentary.
It is a model of precise film making told in the customary three acts. Act 1 shows us Dieter and his fellow pilots aboard an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin flying planes that look to be Korean War vintage (I was a reporter in Vietnam a year before the action in this film took place and I never saw anything remotely like the planes these pilots fly); Dieter’s first and only mission, a secret one into Laos, his crash landing, his capture and his travels and his tortures as a prisoner. (In one memorable scene, he is hung upside down with an ant’s nest strapped to the side of his face.) Act 2 takes place in the prison camp where he meets two other Americans, the neurotic Duane (Steve Zahn) and delusional Eugene (Jeremy Davies). Despite being held there for 30 months, Eugene is convinced that the Army that has forgotten him will be rescuing him any second now. Duane, on the other hand, sees Dieter as perhaps his only path to salvation, if not survival. Act 3 plays out in the jungles of Laos after Dieter, Duane, Eugene and two Southeast Asian prisoners, Phisit (Abhijati Jusakul) and Procet (Lek Chaiyan Chunsuttiwat) have escaped.
Typically, Herzog gives some human dimensions to the prison guards as well as the prisoners. There’s a telling moment in the film when some of the guards, foraging neighborhood villages for rice, come back empty handed. They decide they are going to desert and return to their villages; first, however, they will kill their prisoners and make it look like an aborted escape attempt. It’s Herzog’s way of telling us that the guards have home lives as well and they don’t want to leave these prisoners to starve to death either.
Other than a two final scenes, one in a military hospital and the other back onboard Dieter’s aircraft carrier, both of which seem contrived, this is a wonderfully conceived, executed and acted film. Although my descriptions of the acts may make it sound like a cross between "Papillon" and "The Great Escape," Herzog shuns the false bravado found in both of those earlier movies. This is strictly a character-driven film, it is not so much about what Dieter does or what is done to him, but the effect all this has on his soul. The film is first about fear and then about survival in the hopes that the central character can experience fear once again. Herzog’s jungle--with its thick, almost unpenetrable underbrush, its humidity, its snakes, its rivers and waterfalls, becomes as much a character as Dieter himself.
And what is Herzog’s moral? What does he want you to take away from all this? I dunno. At the end, Dieter is asked basically these questions and he repies ""Empty that which is full. Fill that which is empty. If it itches, scratch it. That’s it."
GRADE: A-
Herzog has even visited this exact story before, in his 1997 documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly," in which the 60-year-old Dengler tells Herzog his life story, including his being shot down over Laos in 1966, his capture by the Pathet Lao, his imprisonment in a POW camp during which his weight dipped to 85 pounds, his escape and his survival through monsoons, leeches and machete wielding villagers. "Rescue Dawn" is Herzog’s dramatization of this story, although Herzog’s brilliance here is that he manages to make the dramatization seem more real than the documentary.
It is a model of precise film making told in the customary three acts. Act 1 shows us Dieter and his fellow pilots aboard an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin flying planes that look to be Korean War vintage (I was a reporter in Vietnam a year before the action in this film took place and I never saw anything remotely like the planes these pilots fly); Dieter’s first and only mission, a secret one into Laos, his crash landing, his capture and his travels and his tortures as a prisoner. (In one memorable scene, he is hung upside down with an ant’s nest strapped to the side of his face.) Act 2 takes place in the prison camp where he meets two other Americans, the neurotic Duane (Steve Zahn) and delusional Eugene (Jeremy Davies). Despite being held there for 30 months, Eugene is convinced that the Army that has forgotten him will be rescuing him any second now. Duane, on the other hand, sees Dieter as perhaps his only path to salvation, if not survival. Act 3 plays out in the jungles of Laos after Dieter, Duane, Eugene and two Southeast Asian prisoners, Phisit (Abhijati Jusakul) and Procet (Lek Chaiyan Chunsuttiwat) have escaped.
Typically, Herzog gives some human dimensions to the prison guards as well as the prisoners. There’s a telling moment in the film when some of the guards, foraging neighborhood villages for rice, come back empty handed. They decide they are going to desert and return to their villages; first, however, they will kill their prisoners and make it look like an aborted escape attempt. It’s Herzog’s way of telling us that the guards have home lives as well and they don’t want to leave these prisoners to starve to death either.
Other than a two final scenes, one in a military hospital and the other back onboard Dieter’s aircraft carrier, both of which seem contrived, this is a wonderfully conceived, executed and acted film. Although my descriptions of the acts may make it sound like a cross between "Papillon" and "The Great Escape," Herzog shuns the false bravado found in both of those earlier movies. This is strictly a character-driven film, it is not so much about what Dieter does or what is done to him, but the effect all this has on his soul. The film is first about fear and then about survival in the hopes that the central character can experience fear once again. Herzog’s jungle--with its thick, almost unpenetrable underbrush, its humidity, its snakes, its rivers and waterfalls, becomes as much a character as Dieter himself.
And what is Herzog’s moral? What does he want you to take away from all this? I dunno. At the end, Dieter is asked basically these questions and he repies ""Empty that which is full. Fill that which is empty. If it itches, scratch it. That’s it."
GRADE: A-
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