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Rating: In 1965, there was not yet a complete perception of what Vietnam would become, both for those who would fight in the field and for the enormous political and cultural impact it would have in the years to come. In this "middle age" of the Asian conflict is set "Rescue Dawn" (2006), a film directed by the Teutonic Werner Herzog. As a prominent representative of the "New German Cinema" (alongside names like Fassbinder and Wenders), Herzog has traced a very personal path over several decades, in which it is difficult to pinpoint reference points. The recent years have been characterized by a deep dive into a documentary career at the expense of cinematic works.
"Rescue Dawn" is born precisely from a previous documentary, "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" (1997), inspired by the imprisonment and subsequent escape of American aviator Dieter Dengler (played by Christian Bale), captured in Laos during a secret military action. In this escape attempt, he was assisted by five other detainees.
Often, war has been used by different directors not so much to show the historical event itself but rather the effects it had on the psychology of those who lived it firsthand. From Oliver Stone's "Platoon" to Malick's "The Thin Red Line," passing through Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" and going back to the great "Paths of Glory" by Stanley Kubrick. More than war films, films about war. Similarly, Herzog's work internalizes the human drama and the profound horror of those who had to fight for their lives thousands of miles from home.
Despite being the first true "Hollywood" film from the German filmmaker, it lacks the action propensity typical of much American cinema. Herzog "limits" himself to telling us a story, without delving into the strictly military events of the conflict. The action sequences are minimal, and the opening scene seems to show us a slightly out-of-place Herzog handling special effects and spectacle. It is the human relationships, in their rawness and primitiveness, on which Herzog focuses: the prison camp becomes the microcosm to be analyzed with a fine "anthropological" lens. There is no emotion or compassion in the enemy's eyes, and only "Jambo" (one of the guerrillas) offers them minimal help. The director also turns his gaze inward within the group, an additional micro-section of a world of tensions and fears.
Werner Herzog directs by borrowing his documentary style and relies heavily on handheld camera, a wise and effective choice in making the "violence" of the jungle palpable. The author sets aside any license for emotion and immerses his characters in a hostile and brutal nature. It is that jungle that is the central element of many titles that have brought the Vietnam epic to the big screen. As one of the inmates exclaims, "it is the jungle that is the real prison." The Bavarian director offers little to the viewer and shapes a work that bets everything on a bare and essential realism. Herzog lingers on the passage of time, on the physical transformations of the prisoners, on their increasingly hollow and tired faces (with Bale returning to work on his physique shortly after "The Machinist"). There is no room to embellish a survival story with out-of-context sentimentality. What interests Herzog is to tell a human chronicle and describe its hunger, pain, and suffering. He places the human being before the wild nature that destroys the body and mind, a discourse already exposed in "Apocalypse Now," an inescapable benchmark for any film on the Vietnam War.
"Rescue Dawn" is a film that thrives on Herzog's beloved tendencies as a documentarist. His recognizable and deeply "European" style somewhat detracts from the vigor of a film that at times appears "listless" and mannerist in its staging but which also possesses a notable ability to remain personal and authentic, without the urgency to take a political stand.
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