Werner Herzog: Rescue Dawn (2007)

[Chris Knipp]

Werner Herzog: Rescue Dawn (2007)

A paradox

Review by Chris Knipp

In this most mainstream film to date Werner Herzog dramatizes the escape and rescue in Southeast Asia of Dieter Dengler, whose life he reviewed more thoroughly, and probably more memorably, ten years ago in the documentary, Little Dieter Wants to Fly. Unlike most of Herzog's work, this is not a movie nobody else could have made, because it follows a conventional adventure format. But still maybe nobody could have done it quite the way Herzog did. He has created a paradox. Working in a genre that's usually uplifting, he's held back from offering the uplift. To do that is uniquely Herzogian, even if the result isn't one of his finest films.

What sets it apart further is the authenticity and detail of its setting and the rough experience the cast and crew went through to make it. It's also true that Herzog has famously dealt with men's struggles in the jungle realistically enacted by cast and crews in Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcaraldo, and he took Dieter to Thailand to relive his experience for Little Dieter. Herzog tied Dengler's hands together and in Dieter's words, "There were Thais following me with rifles. I said, 'Jesus, Werner, this is too close for comfort! I really don't like this.'" And Werner would say 'That's exactly what I want you to say!'" (Given in an Indiewire archive interview.) Maybe Christian Bale, a game and athletic actor who lost 63 pounds for the film The Machinist (but not a handful to deal with like the legendary Klaus Kinski) said something similar. In Rescue Dawn, Bale as Dieter appears to eat live worms at one point; struggles with a wildly writhing six-foot snake and strips it with his teeth. And the jungle locations in which this film were shot were no picnic. The landscape, as always in Herzog, is intense and ever-present.

The film cuts quickly to the chase. Dieter, who we later learn was born in Germany and fell in love with flying when he saw the face of an American bomber pilot grazing near his window, has come to America and joined the Navy to fly and the Navy has sent him out to Southeast Asia. On his first mission he's shot down in his little plane and captured by Laotians who torture him, try to get him to sign a denunciation of his adopted America, torture him some more, and put him in a remote prison camp with a few Asian and American prisoners. The Americans are helicopter pilot Lt. Duane Martin (Steve Zahn) and Eugene DeBruin (Jeremy Davies), a semi-coherent, starved civilian from the CIA-run Air America, who rigidly opposes Dieter's plans to escape. Bale loses a lot of weight again for this adventure, but nothing like the emaciated Davies. The usually comic Zahn is appealing and real as Dieter's failing partner. Dieter must wait months to try an escape because the other prisoners, who've been there for upwards of two years, know survival in the jungle will be not be possible until the rainy season comes to provide a water supply. The prisoners talk in loud whispers, even after they escape, and perhaps partly because Herzog is unused to directing an English language film, the dialogue sometimes becomes hard to follow.

Rescue Dawn's greatest weakness is its greatest strength. Herzog follows Dieter Dengler's story closely, organizing the film to tell it, rather than striving for emotional effects. The result is stripped down, appallingly gritty, but not as suspenseful as some other prisoner of war classics. Some of the most shocking events go by so fast you hardly have time to absorb them. Christian Bale is fine in the lead, conveying his character's real life determination and upbeat spirit but also his wile. He might have looked a bit more haggard toward the end given all his character's been through: look at a real photo of Dengler at that stage. But the jungle struggle is marvelously, spectacularly, repellently vivid. The emotional heart of the film is the relationship between Dieter and Duane.

At the end the traditional uplift is replaced by the simple joy of being rescued. When Dieter gets back to a cheering crowd of civilians and military, he's asked for a message and all he has to say is "Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches"�words attributed to the Duchess of Windsor. And no doubt that's what Dieter Dengler really said to that crowd. In this section Herzog's out of the jungle and out of his element, and however accurate this is, it feels more stagy.

This is a pared-down and effective story. It's no betrayal by Herzog. He's dealing with one of his special people, even if conventionally. But this is not as interesting a film as Grizzy Man or Herzog's famous earlier masterpieces.

[mouton]

RESCUE DAWN
Written and Directed by Werner Herzog

Dieter Dengler: When something is empty, fill it. When something is full, empty it. When you have an itch, scratch it.

For what feels like the first time in the last five years, someone has crafted a war movie that is not concerned with drawing loose comparisons between itself and America’s War on Terror, in an effort to criticize the already heavily debated validity of the war. German director, Werner Herzog, is more interested in telling a story ripe enough with its own depth and desperation to capture the viewer’s attention without having to rely on political disparagement and moralistic preaching to give the film its ultimate significance. RESCUE DAWN tells the true story of Dieter Dengler, a German-born aircraft pilot for the American Navy (played here by the almost always stellar, Christian Bale), who has been sent to Vietnam in 1965, at a time when America’s intentions for Vietnam were not yet clear to the general population. He expected to get some flying time in but had no concept of what was actually in store for himself (much like the American government). Shot down on his first time out over Laos, Dieter is captured by locals and imprisoned in a camp along with a handful of other men. What he and his fellow prisoners endure in their enforced seclusion nearly destroys their minds and spirits but also makes for a gripping film about the strength of the human will.

Of course, one can infer criticism of the American government and its military practices in Herzog’s text. Considering the common comparison between America’s invasion of Iraq and their previous invasion of Vietnam as similarly fruitless and devastating war efforts that were potentially unnecessary to begin with, it would be hard not to make links between the two. Herzog elevates RESCUE DAWN though by not making all of this so obvious and allowing viewers to form their own thoughts on the subject. Still, it is hard not to condemn the American government for not disclosing the truth behind their involvement in Vietnam, when soldiers are being tortured in combat situations that don’t technically exist on paper. Dengler fights for America but has no idea what America is fighting for. Despite the injustice, if you see no comparison, then you are still left with the compelling character of Dieter Dengler. The naïve, boy-like charm of the pilot who always wanted to fly can always be seen as a distant sparkle in Bale’s eyes. And albeit terribly faint at times, his hope is still enough to inspire the same in the other prisoners when they felt they might never feel anything like that again.

Although the RESCUE DAWN shoot was probably more like a day of spa treatments when compared with the real life experiences of Dengler and the other detainees, it is clear just from watching that it couldn’t have been easy. Alongside Bale, American actors, Jeremy Davies and Steve Zahn (in his most mature performance, resulting in a complete transformation), fight their way out of suffering. While it has been reported that Zahn lost over 40 pounds for the role (and that there were no trailers on location in Thailand), Davies is seen without his shirt often in the film. His protruding rib cage and twig-like arms are sickening to the point where I had to look away. Meanwhile, Bale and Zahn must battle the elements throughout their ordeal. They are seen going over rapids, being dragged along the dirt, ingesting maggots and being carried away by mudslides. For their perseverance and fortitude alone, Bale and Zahn deserve recognition for their performances. However, it is their embodiment of men long gone and lost to the dark depths of their minds that push themselves to continue when they are running on nothing that will be most memorable in years to come.

Dieter Dengler is humbled by his experience just as I was humbled by RESCUE DAWN. Dengler is a man of principle with a sense of entitlement that undergoes great growth. He is arrogant when he bombs Vietnam and then expects his captors to extend him the courtesy of using a bathroom. He is smartening up when he will not sign documentation that will supposedly expedite his release and get him home sooner. And he exhibits a newfound sense of responsibility when he takes all the prisoners under his guidance and inspires new faith in their souls while ensuring that they are equipped with the tools necessary to make their awakened dreams a reality. RESCUE DAWN brings its characters and its viewers deep into the jungle and shows how there can be a way out for those brave enough to push on towards it.

www.blacksheepreviews.blogspot.com

[Chris Knipp]

Aren't you sort of contradicting yourself a bit?

For what feels like the first time in the last five years, someone has crafted a war movie that is not concerned with drawing loose comparisons between itself and America�s War on Terror,

Then you say:

Of course, one can infer criticism of the American government and its military practices in Herzog's text. Considering the common comparison between America�s invasion of Iraq and their previous invasion of Vietnam as similarly fruitless and devastating war efforts that were potentially unnecessary to begin with, it would be hard not to make links between the two.

That may be logically not contradictory but I find it a bit confusing to see where you're going. If the film is not concerned with the comparisons, what difference is it that one can (without much justification) draw them?

In fact I would agree--and this appears to be in keeping with Herzog's lifelong approach--that Rescue Dawn has its own context and is interested in Dieter Dengler's experience and little else. It may actually have appealed to Herzog that Dengler joined the Navy to fly and didn't even really think about participating in a war effort. Neither Dengler during his lifetime nor Herzog now was interested in offering a critique of war or the Laotian jailers or America's aggression.

For their perseverance and fortitude alone, Bale and Zahn deserve recognition for these performances.

I get your point but in my view it's an awkward sentence. Better something like: Bale and Zahn's performances deserve recognition simply for the physical perseverance and fortitude they invested in them. That's wordier but it lacks the awkward repetition of "for their" and "for these."

Your description of this aspect of the film is good but otherwise this isn't one of your best efforts. It doesn't seem to know where it's going.

" Dengler is a man of principal. . ."
Wrong word: principle. I don't see Dengler as a man who grew or changed as you imply but as one who had this potential in him, this drive and will and spirit, that enabled him to rise to each successive challenge. Not signing the document, or instance, is not "smartening up," because it is what he inevitably did. It was not a shrewd move (though he could be wily later in the prison) but an instinctive reaction because he looked on America as the country he admired and that had welcomed him. There was not a choice for him there.

It is facile to say Dengler "takes all the prisoners under his guidance and inspires new faith in their souls" becasue they remain pretty hopeless, and all but Zahn's character are extremely lukewarm while Davies refuses adamantly. Where then is the "new faith" he inspires "in their souls"? You're inventing.

". . .while ensuring to equip them ": very awkward English. "Ensuring that they are equipped."

Somehow you don't engage with the complexities of the issues the film raises, and its relationship to Herzog's other work. You've done way better reviews than this.

[mouton]

Ever have a sixth sense about things, Chris? I felt as I was posting this that you would somehow be less than impressed with it. I'm not sure why but here we are. Funny.

Anyhow, I was obviously not trying to contradict myself. I just felt, and perhaps it isn't conveyed correctly, that the you can make inferences into the film regarding military criticism but that the film does not rely upon those implications to be meaningful or even entertaining. I felt that Herzog's script was focused on Dengler's experience and that all other subtext is derived from the experience had by the viewer rather than Herzog pointing us directly at it.

I don't feel that I'm inventing anything when it comes to inspring faith in the detainees. Davies' character is certainly not taken in by Dengler, whether that be out of jealousy or spite or just because his mind is too far gone. Perhaps I simply didn't go as far in my discussion as I should have. Davies' character is antagonistic and claims to be hopeful for rescue but this is clearly wishful thinking. Meanwhile, the rest of the men seemed to me as if they had resigned their fates prior to Dengler's arrival. Dengler refuses to accept his reality and I felt they opened themselves to new possibilities for the first time in months.

Thanks for the grammar tips ... noted and changed.

I particularly enjoyed this bit in your piece ...

"Rescue Dawn's greatest weakness is its greatest strength. Herzog follows Dieter Dengler's story closely, organizing the film to tell it, rather than striving for emotional effects. The result is stripped down, appallingly gritty, but not as suspenseful as some other prisoner of war classics. "

When writing, I was not able to convey what I did not enjoy about the film. I love how you point it out as not a flaw of the film exactly but a scenario where less, while understated and respectful, is certainly not more.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for your reply and favorable comments. I did know what you were saying as you summarized it here, "...I felt that you could make inferences into the film..." etc., but maybe you could have stated that more succinctly as you do here, and then moved on to other points.
I didn't mean to come down too hard on you but I don't feel you were in your element with this movie and your comments seemed one-dimensional. I wish you had been able to "convey" what you "did not enjoy about the film."

Important issues that have been raised about Rescue Dawn:

--Is it a sellout on Herzog's part, a relatively conventional piece of work unworthy of somebody who's been called on this site "the greatest living filmmaker"? Is it an unusually good POW escape adventure film or, considering the source, is it a major disappointment, virtually a sellout? Note what Anthony Lane said about the film in The New Yorker --

There is honor, boldness, and grip in the new movie, but other directors can deliver those. Werner Herzog is the last great hallucinator in cinema, so why break the spell?

(That's just his conclusion--you should read the whole review, especially that last paragraph.)

--Is it racist, an issue brought up in a feature in The Reeler by Lewis Beale (eith good rebuttals)? Kevin Lee brought this up in his film blog Also Like Life and I commented.

--Is it or isn't it apolitical, and is that okay?

I have my own answers to these questions. To me, the first one is the most troubling.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
-Is it a sellout on Herzog's part, a relatively conventional piece of work unworthy of somebody who's been called on this site "the greatest living filmmaker"?

In case the quote refers to a statement I made in my The Wild Blue Yonder review, I called Herzog "one of the great living filmmakers" which is a lot different than singling him out among the many great filmmakers currently active around the globe.

IMDB voters rate Rescue Dawn as their favorite among Herzog's long filmography and I'm happy for him. It fits neatly among Herzog's tales of men of awesome willpower confronting unwieldy environments. What makes Rescue Dawn "mainstream" is basically that its protagonist is perhaps Herzog's most likable and sympathetic protagonist and that his real-life adventure happened to have a happy ending. Herzog pays great attention to the minutiae of captivity and escape in a manner that reminded me of Bresson's A Man Escaped, hardly popular entertainment for the masses.

I wonder if the critic(s) who calls Rescue Dawn a "sellout" is the one who ironically fails to appreciate Herzog's truly ground-breaking, innovative films: Fata Morgana, Lessons of Darkness and The Wild Blue Yonder. In these films, he creates a unique poetic fiction from disparate elements, mostly existing documentary materials which are separated from their original context and given a totally new one.

[Chris Knipp]

I was not referring to your thread, but to Johann's thread on this site in April entitled, "Werner Herzog: Greatest Living Director?" --on which you yourself posted earlier this year. I am hoping you might have something mmore specific to contribute to this question about Rescue Dawn. You misunderstood. No critic to my knowledge called it a "sellout," nor have I. Your speculations about nonexistent critics or mental association of RD with Bresson's Man Escaped or reference to the IMDb rating do not respond to this issue, which relates to the style and effect of RD, not to its "story", which was obviously treated quite differently and in a much more Herzogian manner, in Little Dieter.

Here is the issue: why does he have to redo the story in a conventional POW escape film with Hollywood production values and stars and what good does this do his reputation as an auteur? I won't go over your post point by point because that would be tedious and annoy you, but nothing you say helps resolve this issue of why at this stage Herzog has made such a relatively mainstream movie.

[Chris Knipp]

Here are a couple of reviews that deal with the issue:

In Art Voice:

If there’s a world filmmaker of any repute less likely to sell out to Hollywood than Werner Herzog, I can’t think who it might be. . . while certain parts of Rescue Dawn are undoubtedly meant to appeal to a mass market, overall this is not a work-for-hire of the sort that some filmmakers rely on to finance their personal projects. If you saw the film without knowing who made it, you would at the very least guess that it was heavily influenced by Herzog.. . .[but]In all honesty, Rescue Dawn isn’t top-flight Herzog.

Washington City Paper:

So why does this taut adventure tale, in which a German-American pilot survives captivity, torture, and an escape through the Laotian wilderness, register as a lesser effort? There are already divergent theories on that, but one issue is that Herzog’s latest puts him in competition with his previous work.

I've already cited Lane in The New Yorker above: he's suggesting that Herzog just didn't need to make Rescue Dawn, and we need him for different films, not one like this. Mark Jenkin's position in the Washington City Paper is more like mine--except he develops it further: he points out that the story adheres closely to the facts of Dengler's life; he also says Dieter remains an outsider. I mentioned that his character, Bale in the movie, refrains from offering the adoring public any kind of spiritual uplift and hence subtly avoids a conventional mainstream payoff. But there are many ways in which Rescue Dawn feels like and was produced like a conventional mainstream film, something far from Herzog's other work. As I said, Bale is no Kinski, and though he's a risk-taker and extremist as an actor, he's ultimately more bland, even curiously blithe in the most dire circumstances in the film. I am not arguing that Rescue Dawn is a "sellout" in any crude sense. But this still remains a vexed question, I think, and an interesting topic for a discussion. It continues to trouble me. Art Voice cites an article I'd forgotten about reading. Again in The New Yorker, it shows the troubles Herzog had dealing with production requirements in what the author, Daniel Zalewski, calls Herzog's "first Hollywood-fueled feature."

[cinemabon]

Chris, I'm curious. What is Herzog's relationship to Dieter Dengler? You intimated in the first review that he made a previous film of this journey in a documentary ("Little Dieter wants to fly"). Are they friends in Germany?

Famous quotes from the infamous director:

"Every gray hair on my head I call Kinski," Werner Herzog.

"Film should be looked at straight on; it is not the art of scholars but illiterates," Werner Herzog.

"Someone like Jean Luc-Goddard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung-fu movie," Werner Herzog.

Quote source: IMDB.com

[Chris Knipp]

Interview in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY :

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you originally come across the story of Dieter Dengler?
WERNER HERZOG: In the late '60s, the biggest German magazine ran a series of five or six consecutive articles on his story. It was quite well known at the time. But over time it had been somehow buried and almost forgotten. And, of course, it's a fantastic movie story. Dieter has every quality I like about Americans. It was very sane how he absorbed his ordeal and how he lived after it. He found a very healthy way to cope. He was not one of those nervous wrecks with post...what do we call it?
Post-traumatic stress disorder.
Yes, there was nothing like that in him, probably because his childhood was very tough. That was our immediate connection. We had had very similar upbringings: He grew up in a very remote place in the Black Forest and I grew up in a very remote place in Bavaria, deep in the mountains. And, of course, with the hardships after the war, both of us were very hungry. His mother would take the kids out and rip the wallpaper from the walls of bombed-out houses and cook it because there were nutrients in the glue. I never ate that, but I remember that we were very, very hungry for at least two years or so.
Even when you were making the documentary about him, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, did you always plan to make a feature film version of the story?
Yes, it was always evident I would do that. What complicated things was that Dieter died [in 2001, of Lou Gehrig's disease], and dealing with the rights situation became more complicated. It took a while to sort it out. At one point, before he died, Francis Ford Coppola's company Zoetrope tried to acquire the rights and I said to Dieter, ''Are you crazy? I'm the one who is going to do it.'' And he laughed and said, ''Yeah, okay.'' It was not so easy to get financing but once Christian Bale was chosen to be Batman, all of the sudden it became somewhat easier.

[Chris Knipp]

In addition to answering your question, I hope, this also provides some more answers to mine about why Herzog made such a mainstream film. In that vein again I recommend to anyone who wants to see how Herzog was still clearly doing his best to be Herzog when he made RESCUE DAWN to read the article about the shoot I cited before in THE NEW YORKER. This has nothing to do with Lane's review of the finished film.

[oscar jubis]

The 12-page New Yorker piece is both a condensed biography of Herzog (a good one, but without a single revelation) and evidence of how he successfully resisted efforts by the production company to turn Rescue Dawn into the type of slick "professional" movie Hollywood likes to make. The use of a single camera and the preference for long shots over frequent cuts is a Herzog trademark that makes it difficult for others to craft another version in the editing (the style constitutes a type of insurance against others stealing his vision). The New Yorker writer seems to have an understanding of what makes Herzog unique, particularly the way he introduces fiction elements into documentaries, and shoots fiction films as if they were documentaries.

[Chris Knipp]

It fits neatly among Herzog's tales of men of awesome willpower confronting unwieldy environments. What makes Rescue Dawn "mainstream" is basically that its protagonist is perhaps Herzog's most likable and sympathetic protagonist and that his real-life adventure happened to have a happy ending. Herzog pays great attention to the minutiae of captivity and escape in a manner that reminded me of Bresson's A Man Escaped, hardly popular entertainment for the masses.

"It fits neatly"-- yes; perhaps too neatly? But is Bale's Dengler a figure on a scale with Herzog's other ones? What makes Rescue Dawn also "mainstream" besides the likeable protagonist and happy ending is the fact that it reads in the format of a P.O.W. escape film, a fairly familiar genre or sub-genre; and it is also getting more mainstream promotion and distribution than Herzog's earlier drama features.

Yes, he pays "great attention to the minutiae of captivity and escape." But so do many prison or captivity escape films from various decades and countries that one could name. Does Rescue Dawn really resemble the austere, tireless, repetitive A Man Escaped more than other escape films?

I wish you had said more specifically about Rescue Dawn than these few lines, Oscar.

I'm glad you read the New Yorker "making of" piece and liked it, though.