O Pequeno Dieter Precisa Voar

"I'm not a hero. Only people who are dead are heroes." - Dieter Dengler

Little 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.

I consider this a breathtaking but deceptive film because it seems so simple and straightforward: a Vietnam survivor tells his harrowing tale and some of the story is reenacted on location. Reviewers sometimes even claim that Herzog's presence in the film is minimal, but how wrong they are. We know that all documentaries are "mediated" to some extent and this one has Herzog's subtle hand all over it, most notably in the stunning music, the unbelievably expert selection of archival footage, and the management of cascading images. The evocative power of this film is astounding, starting with its title, the opening title card from the book of "Revelation," and the initial voice-over. This is a movie that one can watch repeatedly with increasing wonder, not a simple commodity that is gulped down with one's favorite beverage on the way to the evening news. This is one of those movies that can resonate with you for a lifetime.

The movie is mainly a monologue, with glimpses of Dieter's life nowadays, but built in its central section around the somewhat bizarre device of having him return to the jungle with a band of Vietnamese who partly reenact his experiences - he demonstrates torture techniques, the march through the jungle etc. Herzog is too much a filmmaker to be satisfied with mere memories it seems - he must also see: although with full knowledge that this form of retrospective seeing will be inescapably somewhat bizarre. Dieter's past traumas and current stability (although he's still preoccupied by the idea of closed doors and is still hoarding vast unneeded emergency food supplies - the former seems a bit staged, but that's part of the intrigue) seem to chime with Herzog's own past glories and now relative reduced state, and the title with its obviously childish edge has an air of longing and acknowledgment of past fantasies and their fatal possibilities. But despite the true pain of the monologue, Herzog doesn't dwell on adversity, but rather on the ultimate grandeur (for example, the final image of thousands of military planes parked in the desert) - in which context his movie seems to fall short of the true cosmic resonance of some of Errol Morris' work. But he coaxes Dieter's story expertly and has the classic strengths of a good story-teller, and the movie's quite fascinating even if it doesn't completely gel in all respects.

After I finished watching this intriguing documentary, I wondered; how much of Little Dieter was in Herzog, and vice versa? For Werner Herzog(and Dieter likewise) seemed capable of evoking a whole spectrum of human emotions in his works, however idiosyncratic they looked on the surface.

In this story of an American immigrant from Germany, who piloted a plane in Nam, got shot down, interned, escaped and survived, we got to see how the man lived, before, during and after this arduous period of ordeal. All that insurmountable pain and uphill battles might not have fazed the man, but it certainly took its toll. Memories of these experiences continue to haunt his being. Case in point, due in part to enduring that period of torture and starvation, the man now stocked his cellar with lotsa food in case he's ever locked in....

Could the above have been a reason why Herzog chose to film this man? A man seemingly steeped in personality dysfunctions but was in fact merely a wounded man living his life, the only way he knew how? Could it be that Dieter's story also somehow mirrored Herzog's life and outlook? Damned if I am to know the answers to these universal mysteries...

Much had been said about the questionable sanity of Werner Herzog. But during my intensive devouring of his films over this last week, I began to see a pattern unravelling. This man had many profound insights to share with us all about humanity. And they often transcended intellectual boundaries. Through those intangibly twisted tales he weaved, he conveyed his ideas to us all lucidly, impactfully. And he did them all without ever gauzing the profusion in his bleeding heart. This man was never afraid of showing his earnest emotions nor was he afraid of breaking cinematic conventions. If one cared enough to be touched by the man, he or she will do so without safety nets. I did. Nice.

Yes, its no longer fashionable in these times of impenetrable cynicism to embrace a man like Werner Herzog. But I am fascinated by this psycho visionary nonetheless. And I will follow the man to the very pits of wherever he's heading. As long as its somewhere I'm willing to go, that is....heh.

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.