Exposing the hero - In `Rescue Dawn,' Werner Herzog refuses to turn a POW's story into mindless myth.
WERNER HERZOG has been here before, and not just because he first visited this story in his 1997 documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly." His first Hollywood feature, "Rescue Dawn" is a dramatic interpretation of the true-life ordeal of U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, who escaped from a Laotian prisoner-of-war camp and survived weeks in the jungle just before the start of the Vietnam War. Herzog returns to the themes that have preoccupied him throughout his career -- the single-minded hero with the impossible dream, the cruel indifference of nature to his desires, the obsessions that rescue and doom him. Like the protagonists of "Fitzcarraldo" and "Aguirre: The Wrath of God," Dengler is the quintessential Herzog hero, evincing a strength of purpose that strains at the edges of human potential and possessed of an unwavering certainty that flirts with crazy but -- in this case, at least -- declines to seal the deal.
'Rescue Dawn': A review of "Rescue Dawn" in the July 4 Calendar said Navy pilot Dieter Dengler escaped from a Laotian prisoner-of-war camp and survived weeks in the jungle just before the start of the Vietnam War. As the review later says, Dengler was held as a prisoner of war in 1966; that was after the start of the Vietnam War. The review also said that Dengler became obsessed with flying after a bomber flew so close to his house that he was able to look the pilot in the eyes. The plane that flew by that he said made a lasting impression was a single-engine fighter.
As portrayed by a simultaneously vulpine and puppyish Christian Bale, pared down to skin and bones for the role, Dieter appears to be psychologically incapable of countenancing defeat. Born in Germany during World War II, Dieter's earliest experiences were marked by extreme deprivation and hardship. He became obsessed with flying after a bomber flew so close to his house that he was able to look the pilot in the eyes. It's a defining incident that Dengler recounts in the documentary and Bale reprises in the film. As vivid as the anecdote is, it's hard not to wonder if the experience has not been distorted in his memory by the need to impart order and meaning on the senseless suffering.
If indeed Dieter's memory of the event is more interpretation than pure recollection, it's remarkable for its adaptiveness. You can't believe that this is what little Dieter takes away from his first brush with death. As one of his fellow POWs exclaims upon hearing the story, "a guy tries to kill you, and you want his job!"
His childhood close encounter would not be the last time Dieter exchanged meaningful glances with death. The film begins in 1966, when Dieter and his battalion are sent on a secret bombing raid over Laos. After his plane is shot down, Dieter endures a few days of torture at the hands of Pathet Lao soldiers. After he refuses to sign a statement denouncing United States policies, he is taken to a POW camp.
