Movie review: Rescue Dawn

Herzog directs Bale: git a (tow) rope!

by John P. Meyer

Filmmaker Werner Herzog appears to have a fondness for filming in jungle locales (reference Aguirre, Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, both of which play our their dramatic extremities in the green vastness of Amazonia). Furthermore, he's committed to cinéma vérité to the extent that if, for instance, the story calls for a 360-ton steamship to be hauled by cable up the side of a mountain (as in Fitzcarraldo), he actually has people haul the damn steamship up the side of the damn mountain. While he films them. Special effects be damned.

Herzog's scripts typically call for his lead players to seek out the limits of their physical and/or emotional endurance - and then to move beyond those limits. His long professional association with volatile lead actor Klaus Kinski has been well documented, nowhere better than in this lengthy (but imminently entertaining) 2005 interview with Roger Ebert. Given that Kinski is no longer in the picture (literally and figuratively), where's a filmmaker of Herzog's proclivities to turn?

Why, towards Christian Bale, of course! Bale's level of immersion in his roles has redefined method acting (it can now be referred to as "possessed by alien beings acting"): for the role of Trevor Reznik in The Machinist (El Maquinista) he lost 62 pounds by subsisting on a 275 calorie/day diet for four months prior to the filming; I don't even want to know what he did to prepare for his role as yuppie serial slayer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

He presumably resorted to something close to starvation during the course of the filming of Herzog's Rescue Dawn, opening today at the Angelika Dallas (and screened for friends of AFI on June 20) - his emaciation certainly shows, and - knowing Herr Herzog - it's probably not done with special visual effects. At various points of the film, Bale can be seen to eat squirming maggots (with apparent relish), pluck actual blood-sucking leeches from his bony chest and take a bite out of a raw snake, struggling mightily to chew through a tendon the consistency of piano wire. [WARNING: keep this guy away from your local Petco.]

Herzog returns to his jungle roots with Bale (and a host of others) in tow, this time to the jungles of Thailand where they attempt to recreate the harrowing tale of U.S. Navy aviator Dieter Dengler. Dengler - who found himself shot down over Laos during a covert 1965 ground attack mission, then captured and held under the most miserable of conditions by Viet Cong-sympathizing irregulars - was the subject of a documentary produced by Herzog in 1997 (Little Dieter Needs to Fly). The fact that our military wasn't supposed to be operating in Laotian air space meant that Lieutenant Dengler's story couldn't be told until its declassification following war's end, and - more to the point in terms of Dengler's prospects for release - the U.S. government could not officially acknowledge his presence there.

So Dieter, assisted by a half-dozen fellow prisoners in the remote makeshift prison compound, took it upon himself to orchestrate an escape, drawing on an amazing reservoir of MacGyver-ish ingenuity and a determination that would put Sisyphus to shame.

Rescue Dawn chronicles Dieter Dengler's first (and last) carrier-born attack mission, during which his Skyraider fighter-bomber becomes catastrophically disabled by the collateral blast from his own exploding-on-target missile. After splashing down in a rice paddy, he spends a heady couple of hours dodging AK-armed patrols in the mountainous terrain, but the sadly-prescient orientation film that he and his fellow pilots watched prior to launching off the carrier deck has not prepared him adequately in the tactics of in-country evasion: to hone these techniques he will have to endure months of abuse and deprivation in this verdant green Hell of tropical captivity. Vintage film fans will periodically find themselves reminded of Bridge on the River Kwai, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and perhaps even The Great Escape - though Herzog's movie conveys more "realness" than any of these features.

And that works to its great advantage, because the documentary style employed by cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger puts us right there in the heat-baked shit hole of a jungle prison camp alongside Dieter, Duane (Steve Zahn) and the hope-addled Eugene (Jeremy Davies), who's dead certain that America will never declare open war in Vietnam - making their release only a matter of time. (Never mind that their provincial captors confer only rarely with uniformed NVA soldiers who would have any means of knowing what America's intentions might or might not be.)

For his birthday, his prison buddies surprise Dieter with a cup full of something. When he asks them what it is, the answer is "squished insect larvae." "My favorite!", he proclaims - and means it. As the malnutritious weeks drag by and prisoner food fantasy monologues become ever more pornographic in their telling, even the recalcitrant Gene comes around to the idea of attempted escape - although what they'll do and where they'll go after fleeing the camp is anyone's guess. As Duane points out early on, "the jungle is the prison, man."

Herzog effectively hammers home the prisoners' keen sense of isolation and cruel teasing hope by having a variety of U.S. warplanes swoop over their compound on odd occasions, giving them a tantalizing glimpse of the life of technology and power they've been forced to abandon utterly. And it's this theater air presence that any escapees will have to rely on in order to ever make it home.

Rescue Dawn opens locally July 13.

WORDS OF ADVICE: "Don't mess with these guys - you'll regret it." - Duane to Dieter, re. his bamboo prison captors.

WORDS OF HOPE: "I know where there's a nail." - Farkas (GQ), in response to Dieter's plaintive "If only I had..." statement.

WORDS OF WONDER: "You're a strange bird, Dieter. Guy tries to kill you and you want his job." - Duane's reaction to Dieter's narrative regarding his youthful memory of being on the receiving end of an Allied strafing run.

WORDS OF WISDOM: "Empty what is full; fill what is empty; scratch where it itches." - Dieter's advice to his crewmates regarding survival.