Werner Herzog appears in person this weekend at New York's Film Forum, to kick off a three-week retrospective of his documentary filmmaking. Go if you can: The combination of his distinctive German accent and patient, soft-spoken, tell-it-like-it-is storytelling is mesmerizing. I heard him speak at the 1992 San Jose Film Festival, where he presented his truly searing look at the Kuwait oil fires started during the Gulf War, Lessons of Darkness. The evening was one of the highlights of my two-year stay in Silicon Valley, before its boom and bust.
Lessons of Darkness is part of this retrospective, as are a number of inspiring documentaries made by others, like Errol Morris' Gates of Heaven and Vernon, Florida, and Hubert Sauper's Darwin's Nightmare, which starkly relates how inconvenient truths are besetting Tanzania. Tonight offers an opportunity to see his outstanding 1997 portrait of U.S. airman Dieter Dengler, Little Dieter Needs to Fly (pictured). Dengler's obsessive interest in flight saw him through a deprived and brutal childhood in Nazi Germany; when his village was destroyed by American bombers, he and his family decamped to the States, where fulfilling his dream he became a Navy pilot. But destiny denied him what would have been a reversal of roles, from oppressed to oppressor: On his first, top-secret mission over Laos, during the Vietnam War, he was shot down, and captured by capricious, trigger-happy Pathet Lao soldiers. Given up for dead in this uncharted territory, along with fellow American prisoners who had been jailed for two years, Dengler plotted escape. The incredible details of his escape and rescue, which Herzog filmed with Dengler at the actual locations, are the crux of the piece.
Herzog has made Dengler's story into a feature film, Rescue Dawn, which MGM will release July 4. The date can't be entirely coincidental; there is a rah-rah component to Dengler's story in the film. What's inspiring about the documentary, however, feels flat and unleavened in Rescue Dawn, which had a troubled production history. By the time we reach the climax, which comes across differently than from how Dengler (who died in 2001 of Lou Gehrig's disease) describes it, you get the feeling that Herzog has left the editing suite. Herzog doesn't do triumphant, and you get the feeling that he left the film in the hands of its many mettlesome producers to finish as they wished, complete with a sudden addition of bombast to Klaus Badelt's score.
In interviews, Herzog asserts that he always wanted to make Dengler's story into a feature, and that the 80-minute documentary is its trailer. If so, then this is a case where the coming attraction definitively trumps the actual movie. Rescue Dawn (pictured) isn't bad, but it is broken-backed; according to a Vanity Fair article that ran last year (when the film was supposed to have been released) the writer-director, known for his fearless exploration of locations, was discouraged when he was obliged to shoot in the more accomodating Thailand and not Laos. A pall of missed opportunities over what Herzog felt was a dream project hangs over Rescue Dawn (not a particularly Herzogian title). Like Herzog's lesser films--and his more sporadically produced features have paled alongside his more numerous and consistently excellent documentaries, including 2005's Grizzly Man, for years--the two-hour-plus Rescue Dawn is logy, and rarely as involving as a making-of featurette about its turbulent production would be.
Part of the problem may be Herzog's immersion in the subject. He wants us to feel the humidity and stupor of prison camp life, and he does, all too well; the statis of the prison scenes, which are nimbly described by Dengler in the documentary, is completely enervating. That he seems to encourage his performers to behave, rather than act, is a real issue with twitchy Jeremy Davies, who is cast as one of the captives. Davies is more a prisoner of Method acting than he is of war, and when supporting player duty passes from him to co-star Steve Zahn, who brings a lighter touch to a poignant role, the film shakes off some of its tedium. Herzog is most fortunate in his star, Christian Bale. He loses Dengler's German accent, but in one of his yo-yo dieting regimens was also willing to lose the weight, and is credibly cast as Dengler. More than the physique, though, Bale captures Dengler's can-do spirit, which makes the documentary so watchable. Life in the camp is its own adventure, and Bale's Dengler tears into it, almost oblivious to how hairsbreadth his new existence is. Rescue Dawn consolidates Bale's hold as one of the finest young film stars, one capable of elevating problem material (like last year's Harsh Times) through his smart self-assurance.
What's really missing from Rescue Dawn, however, is Herzog. His documentary narrations--questioning, respectful, speculative--are superb, and it's easy to see how he gets subjects like Dengler to open up on difficult, close-to-the-bone subjects. His commitment to the documentary form, which in the case of Little Dieter Needs to Fly is largely less show than tell, and utterly fascinating to listen to, is commendable. The uneven Rescue Dawn is worth a look, too, but the possibility of a Herzog commentary track on the eventual DVD is more tantalizing than experiencing the film without his guiding spirit.
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