Word: dengler
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...nuts like Kinski, but he has the insane dedication Herzog asks of his performers; he lost 55 lbs. for his role in Rescue Dawn. The movie is a remake, in a way, of Herzog's 1997 documentary Little Dieter Loves to Fly, about a German boy, Dieter Dengler, whose home in the Black Forest was bombed by U.S. planes; he caught a glimpse of the pilot, "like a vision ... like an imaginary being," and decided that he wanted to fly--a theme in many Herzog docs. Dengler went to the U.S., joined the Navy and was shot down over Laos...
Rescue Dawn hasn't quite the intensity or veracity of Little Dieter. Somehow, hearing Dengler testify to the atrocities he survived is more vivid than watching an excellent cast re-enact them. But the Herzog team's devotion to the horror of the story, and to Dengler's unkillable spirit, is gratifying. Rescue Dawn is a tale of heroism untainted by political skepticism. In an age when U.S. soldiers are seen as villains or victims, the movie offers a GI who bravely, or madly, simply refuses...
...almost goes without saying that Dengler's story would attract (and obsess) Werner Herzog, a director drawn to portrayals of men driven to extreme behavior in extreme situations. Herzog's features - Aguirre the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo - and his conditions - notably the great Grizzly Man- provide ample and thrilling testimony to the uniqueness of his enterprise. He is willing to go places no other filmmaker goes and he simply has no competitors when it comes to strenuous risk-taking. About a decade ago he made a hypnotic documentary about Dengler's exploits, entitled Little Dieter Needs...
...That's not to say that the new film, which stars Christian Bale as Dengler and Steve Zahn as the man who joins him in escape, is anything less than authentic and austere in its evocations of the primitive cruelties these men endured both in prison and during their escape. It has the ability to show us, in grim detail, things that Dengler, in the previous film, could only haltingly allude to. Yet, in so doing, it shifts our perspective. Inevitably, we start thinking about other POW escape movies and judging this one by their fictionally enhanced standards. Dengler becomes...
...Most of all, we miss the living presence of Dieter Dengler, who died five years ago. When we met him in Little Dieter, he was driving in a solid car, living in a stolid middle class house, having spent the rest of his life as a test pilot (he managed to survive four more plane crashes), apparently unmarked by his youthful adventures. That came to be the most heroic thing about him - his ability to embrace normalcy, to talk about the past almost as if it were a story that happened to someone else. There was a tranquility about...