Another brilliant documentary from Werner Herzog. One more, he finds an engaging subject and lets him tell his story, but again Herzog's skill lies in drawing it out, and the composition.
Dieter Dengler was a USAF pilot in Vietnam, and was shot down over Laos in 1966. He was captured by Laotian forces, and held in a prison camp on the Laos/North Vietnamese border for 6 months. He escaped with another American, who was murdered in a skirmish with locals, and eventually managed to get west towards the Thai border, where he was spotted and rescued by US forces. He now lives up in the mountains in California, where he feels free, although the persisting influence of his experience is evident in his hoarding of emergency supplies under the house.
His story is extraordinary, and Dieter is a remarkable man - highly articulate, funny, resolute. Herzog takes him to various places to reenact his history - the town in Germany where he grew up during the war, the Laotian jungle where he was shot down, and even gets him to portray himself running through the jungle with his captors.
Herzog intercuts archive footage discretely and relevantly, including that of Dieter's press conference after his rescue and some rehabilitation. It's plain that he was exceptionally articulate and engaging even then, and 30 further years of being treated as a war hero would have helped him polish the story.
Herzog's use of music is subtle and complementary - one recurring theme is Dvorak's New World Symphony (Dieter left Germany aged 18 to go to the New World)
Dengler died in 2001, aged 62.
Rescue Dawn, a dramatized film of Dengler's story directed by Herzog and starring Christian Bale, will be released soon. Bale is making a habit of playing starvation victims, it seems.
IMDb
[edit] For the sake of SpoutBlog , the Mark Kermode interview, during which Werner Herzog was randomly shot at, and hit:
Herzog interview
Dieter Dengler was a USAF pilot in Vietnam, and was shot down over Laos in 1966. He was captured by Laotian forces, and held in a prison camp on the Laos/North Vietnamese border for 6 months. He escaped with another American, who was murdered in a skirmish with locals, and eventually managed to get west towards the Thai border, where he was spotted and rescued by US forces. He now lives up in the mountains in California, where he feels free, although the persisting influence of his experience is evident in his hoarding of emergency supplies under the house.
His story is extraordinary, and Dieter is a remarkable man - highly articulate, funny, resolute. Herzog takes him to various places to reenact his history - the town in Germany where he grew up during the war, the Laotian jungle where he was shot down, and even gets him to portray himself running through the jungle with his captors.
Herzog intercuts archive footage discretely and relevantly, including that of Dieter's press conference after his rescue and some rehabilitation. It's plain that he was exceptionally articulate and engaging even then, and 30 further years of being treated as a war hero would have helped him polish the story.
Herzog's use of music is subtle and complementary - one recurring theme is Dvorak's New World Symphony (Dieter left Germany aged 18 to go to the New World)
Dengler died in 2001, aged 62.
Rescue Dawn, a dramatized film of Dengler's story directed by Herzog and starring Christian Bale, will be released soon. Bale is making a habit of playing starvation victims, it seems.
IMDb
[edit] For the sake of SpoutBlog , the Mark Kermode interview, during which Werner Herzog was randomly shot at, and hit:
Herzog interview
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