The erratic ecstatic vision of Werner Herzog
The other night I saw “Rescue Dawn” and found it, like all the Werner Herzog films I’ve seen, strangely compelling and somewhat badly made.
The film, which concerns the shooting-down of Americanized German pilot Dieter Dengler in Laos prior to the Vietnam War, was previously the subject of a documentary (also by Herzog) called “Little Dieter Needs to Fly.”
The most immediately noticeable aspect of this film is the film stock itself, which is so bad that the movie looks like a 1970’s porno flick. I kept waiting for Johnny Wad to make an appearance. One could argue that this is an attempt by the filmmaker to return us to the period of the film’s setting, but in actuality I suspect “Rescue Dawn” was shot on degraded film left over from other ventures. The effect is jarring, but after a while, your eyes do adjust — eventually, human beings can get used to anything.
There are also the usual lapses in storytelling. Before the action of the movie (our hero getting shot down in Laos), we get all of about 1 minute of his getting his flight gear specially tailored in a way that, later, plays absolutely no relevant role in the movie, and another 1 minute of his watching an Army jungle survival film that also plays no role. (None of the skills demonstrated is ever needed.)
Most disastrously, the ending is very badly considered and feels summoned from a Michael Bay movie I’m glad I missed. Dengler, having now survived the horrors of torture and survival in the jungle, is upon his return hoisted aloft by the crew of his ship and carried around, his arms upthrust in victory. I think I’ve also seen this scene in every single movie about nerdy kids who triumph at summer camp. Its awfulness is maximized by the bad shooting, the bad dialogue, and the utter lack of fresh ideas.
And yet, as is usually the case with Herzog, much of the movie is amazing.
The scenes of torture are inventive and difficult to watch. They ring with truth, especially in the self-evident and very real changes to Christian Bale’s physique. (He lost 80 pounds over time for this role.) So too with the escape of Dengler and his fellow prisoners, a plan that goes all too wrong for what can only be described as very real but very stupidly human reasons: the one prisoner simply doesn’t show up for the shoot-out. (He never gives a good explanation, and that comports with my own findings about people who don’t show up when they’re supposed to.) Bale puts his all into his performance, running barefoot over treacherous terrain, eating wriggling earthworms and even ripping into a live snake with his bare teeth. (It is either absolutely a live snake or this is brilliantly edited — which is not the hallmark of a Herzog movie.) Bale does an excellent job of capturing Dengler’s loopy optimism and blockheadedness. And, finally, the terrible and sad decline of the escapee played by Steve Zahn is a tragedy unfolding before our eyes. Zahn’s performance is harrowing.
I can think of no other director who so perfectly conveys the terrors and chaos hiding behind the beauty of unruly nature. Every scene in a Herzog film carries an implicit threat, whether it’s Klaus Kinski turning from friend to fiend frame by frame in “My Best Fiend,” or the deluded naturalist cavorting with the bears he believes his friends in “Grizzly Man.” It’s the dangerous art that’s most exciting — think Stravinsky, Picasso, the Sex Pistols — and that’s why, although I’m not terribly interested in film, I keep returning to the films of Werner Herzog.
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Now playing: Brian Eno – Here Come The Warm Jets
via FoxyTunes
August 26th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Yes, those personalized films do stand out. I love directors like Fellini whose work resembles no one else’s. My current favorite of that type is Guy Maddin. I reccomend THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD and TWILIGHT OF THE ICE NYMPHS.
Anyone else have favorites to share?
April 14th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
[…] As I’ve remarked before, Herzog’s films are simultaneously wonderful and bad. He always seems to miss precisely the shot he needs to convey the story. In fact, entire scenes seem to go missing, with plot threads dangling in the wind. At the same time, every single one of his films is loaded with individual moments so startling, so compelling and odd, that it will never leave you. In “Aguirre, Wrath of God,” one of those moments is the little raft that gets caught in a pool of turbulence, eventually drowning part of the expedition. (Which, in typical Herzog form, almost actually happened to a member or two of the cast.) In “Fitzcarraldo,” it’s Klaus Kinski’s character awakening to find that the riverboat he’s on is careening toward a waterfall. In “Grizzly Man,” it’s the shot of the supremely naive Timothy Treadwell swimming serenely with one of his bear brethren and then seeing that bear swing about to take a swipe at him in an awful premonition of Treadwell’s ultimate fate. These films, plus “Rescue Dawn,” “Little Dieter Needs to Fly,” “Where the Green Ants Dream,” “My Best Fiend,” and several Herzog short subjects have given me hours of delight (mixed with frustration over the errant storytelling. […]