Film Perfection

Crappy film

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

While Herzog provides his usual share of directorial novelties (including a "re-enactment" of Dieter's trek through the Laotian jungle with his captors--but not carried to the extent of re- enacting the tortures he went through), it's hard to see why this miraculous death-avoiding trek of Dieter's is any more worthy of a documentary than, say, a survivor's story of a Wehrmacht soldier walking his way back to Germany from the Russian front. In both instances, it's a tale of an individual surviving death at every turn--and not a tale of the slaughterhouse that dealt death to millions of people over the course of a war. And while a Wehrmacht soldier's tale of survival might well include war crimes committed against civilians, Dieter's tale can hardly avoid that part of the tale--with the difference that the crimes committed by the soldiers of the Wehrmacht were never reported for the most part, whereas we have vivid technicolor imagery (incorporated into Herzog's film as well) of the horrors inflicted on the people of Vietnam. Herzog's usage of historical footage of US bombing runs may indeed convey a deeply unsettling sensation of the contrast between the "glorious" technicolor pyrotechnics and the imaged horror felt by the people living the experience on the ground--and, I suppose, that's to Herzog's credit. But, in the end, this tale of an American pilot's escape from a POW camp--a tale that so defies credibility that it must be true--ends up endowing the protagonist with a hero's status. It's true enough that Dieter refuses the label "hero" (because "only the dead can be heroes"), but he also evidences not one iota of remorse for his participation in the war. And this is the problem: A hero must be someone who embodies and realizes in his deeds the noblest virtues and values of our culture. Being a willing combatant in a war initiated by the US and that led to the deaths of between a million and a half and 4 million people for no good reason is not the stuff of heroes.

I had the opportunity to see this last evening at a local film festival. Herzog introduced the film and did an hour long Q&A afterward.This is a brilliantly done "documentary"; Herzog explained afterward that he does not consider his films to be true documentary since facts sometimes camouflage the truth. Instead he scripts some scenes and ad-libs some to introduce a new element that may have been missed if he followed the original story outline.Little Dieter, unlike Timothy Treadwell, is a real person that you fall in love with; you cheer for him, you feel the anguish that he feels. You admire the sense of humor and joy for life that he exhibited here 30 years after he was taken into captivity by the Viet Cong. You are disappointed to hear afterward that Dieter passed on not too long ago.As in most Herzog films, the imagery is breathtakingly beautiful with a wonderful choice of background music. Especially a scene of battle taken from archives of the Viet Nam war but fitting the story line of Dieter.The core of the film has Dieter return to the hellish jungle where he was a POW and he re-enacts his journey with some locals. Harrowing for us to watch, I can't imagine what he felt as he was bound again.One of the better films to depict and discuss the nightmare of the Viet Nam war. It should serve as a lesson to us all.

"I'm not a hero. Only people who are dead are heroes." - Dieter DenglerLittle Dieter Needs to Fly, a 1997 documentary by Werner Herzog of the life of Vietnam war-hero Dieter Dengler, begins with a quotation from the Book of Revelations: "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them." As the film starts, Dieter walks into a tattoo shop in San Francisco and looks at a painting of Death in a fiery, horse-drawn chariot. "Death didn't want me," he says, referring to his survival after six months in a Viet Cong prison camp. Herzog documents Dengler's life from his childhood in Wildburg in the Black Forest region of Germany to his escape and rescue from Laos. Growing up in Germany during World War II, Dengler listened to the constant sound of Allied planes overhead and dreamed of becoming a pilot. "As a child," Herzog says in voice-over, "Dieter saw things that made no earthly sense at all. Germany had been transformed into a dreamscape of the surreal." Dieter came to the United States when he was only 18, joined the Navy and was trained to become a pilot. He moved to California and was sent to Vietnam in 1966. "It all looked strange", Dieter says, "like a distant barbaric dream". On his first mission as a pilot, Dieter was shot down and captured by the Pathet Lao, then later turned over to the Viet Cong. He remained a prisoner in Laos for six months.Told through archival footage, dream sequences, recreations in actual jungle locations, exotic music, and surreal imagery, the film is divided into four chapters, each representing a period from Dengler's life. Like a Greek tragedy, Herzog has named the sequences: The Man, His Dream, Punishment, and Redemption. Little Dieter Needs to Fly is not a linear documentary, but a very personal and poetic film, similar in a way to Agnes Varda's documentary essay, "The Gleaners and I". Having long been fascinated with the experience of men in jungles (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo) and having himself grown up in Germany during the war, Herzog provides a voice-over commentary that is as much about himself as it is about Dieter Dengler. Dieter tells his gruesome tale in a strangely chatty, matter-of-fact manner without anger or bitterness, almost nonchalantly recounting mind-numbing details of his captivity and torture. He does not try to place the events in a historical or political context or to comment on the rights and wrongs of the war, but provides a strictly personal account of his survival against overwhelming odds. Footage of both bombed out German cities in World War II and bombs lighting up the dense foliage over the Vietnam jungle make the experience very vivid. Dvorak and Bach, Tibetan throat singing, and native African chants are brilliantly interspersed to add depth and beauty to the experience. A chant from Madagascar, "Oay Lahy E", sung while Dieter walks through a sea of fighter planes, adds a final transcendent touch. Little Dieter Needs to Fly is an unforgettable film that moves beyond the limitations of the genre to become a moving testament to both the absurdity of war and the resilience of the human spirit. NOTE: Be sure to watch past the end credits. There is a postscript on the DVD that truly completes the experience.

Your jaw will drop to the floor about 3 minutes into the movie......and you won't pick it up again until the end. Drips with irony......as only real life stories can. A masterpiece. A must see in theatre, on video.......any which way you can. Seek it out. If you have seen Crumb and liked it, see this too. If you haven't, then see Crumb also. Truth murders fiction. This is the only 10/10 rating I have ever given a movie.