by Marc Calderaro

Airport employee Marc gives us a diatribe regarding

Revisiting: Rescue Dawn – Herzog and the Hopeless Hero

by Marc Calderaro

Throughout his nearly five-decade career, Bavarian director, Werner Herzog, has brought many distinguished moments to the screen thanks to his “outsider-art” mentality (he once famously said his only cinematic influence was Dr. Fu Manchu, because he noticed that shots were reused in editing).  Though his last ten years have been defined by his non-fiction work (Encounters at the End of the World, Grizzly Man, White Diamond, Wheel of Time, Wings of Hope, etc.), 2006’s Rescue Dawn seemed a triumphant return to form, complete with all the usual Herzog craziness (none of his actors used trailers, Herzog lost 30 pounds along with his actors, Christian Bale ate a bowlful of maggots – you know the drill).  Along with his regular eccentricities, a Herzog-famous character was also back in frame – the Hopeless Hero.  Bale’s performance as LTJG Dieter Dengler typifies Herzog’s famed Hopeless Hero in many ways: Dengler faces insurmountable odds in completing a given task; he has unwavering drive and determination towards that task; and he destroys many lives attempting the task’s completion.  But unlike the others before him, Dengler subverts the Herzog model in one crucial way: he actually succeeds.

The Hopeless Heroes – those who are pushed by the world and see no other option but to push back.  Those who see nothing but opportunity ahead, though ahead is nothing.  It’s with this group Herzog has fixated, most likely because the iconoclast considers himself a member.  Stroszek, Grizzly Man, Heart of Glass, etc. all deal with the reality of world-shaping through one man.  And though Herzog uses this character countless times, his two most famous examples are Fitzcarraldo (Fitzcarraldo 1982) and Aguirre (Aguirre: the Wrath of God 1972).  Both of these men, deftly portrayed by Herzog’s best friend, Klaus Kinski, exhibit similar anti-social and obsessive qualities, though in seemingly opposite ways. 

Fitzcarraldo not only dreams of bringing opera to the jungles of South America, he is compelled to turn that dream into reality.  The compulsion is so strong, it drives him into the ruthless rubber-tree business, pit against rich and powerful barons, solely so he can spend his soon-to-be-made fortune on the lavish hallucination.  His improbable plan results in the most well-known sequence in Herzog cinema, carrying a 320-ton ship over a mountain to reach a previously untenable stretch of jungle – with disastrous consequences.

With much the same fervor and zeal, Don Lope de Aguirre pursues the fabled El Dorado along the shores of the Amazon River.  He quests for power and immortality so desperately, Aguirre betrays his fellow conquistadors multiple times, condemns his sister (and the rest of his crew) to death, and submits himself to madness in an unjustified search for an imagined city.  Though the two characters are driven by distinctly different motives – the proliferation of art and the proliferation of oneself – the tenacity and unrelenting obsession is the same.  And though Aguirre’s consequences are graver than Fitzcarraldo’s (the art-lover at least escapes with his life), both lives embody the Herzogian archetype, the Hopeless Hero.  And in Rescue Dawn, the barely fictionalized capture and escape Dieter Dengler, Herzog has a real-life example of his favorite character model.

Dengler’s obsessions started early.  As a child he remembers “needing to fly” after almost being killed by an airplane, and so he does (that line lends itself to Herzog’s 1997 documentary about the Lieutenant, Little Dieter Needs to Fly).  And on the first day of his POW imprisonment in Laos, Dengler tells the other prisoners that he needs to escape, and so he does.  That’s just how Dengler sees the world – he needs to.  Just as Aguirre needs to find El Dorado, as Fitzcarraldo needs the opera.  Of course, he doesn’t need to escape at all, as the other occupants attest.  Some have already survived upwards of two years in the camp.  They all have tips and tricks to help Dengler, and why not believe them – they’re all still breathing.  But Dengler takes none of it to heart and schemes for the inevitable escape, sharpening bullet casings into knives and storing hidden food scraps to sustain them in the vast jungles of Southeast Asia.

Though his actions seem reasonable and are on some level rational, his Aguirre logic reveals itself through conversations with cellmates Duane W. Martin and Gene DeBruin (portrayed impeccably by Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies, respectively).  Both of these veterans warn Dengler of his plan’s improbability and the dangers he brings to everyone else in the camp when he egotistically makes a break for it.  Both Duane and Gene make convincing arguments.  The prisoners have relatively no idea where they are, how to overwhelm the many armed guards, or just how to escape the dense jungle.  The real Dieter Dengler was adept at survival and combat, but the Dengler portrayed in the film is not shown to have acumen as a solider.  So we have no reason to believe he, nor anyone else in the camp, can achieve such a lofty goal.  All he’d be doing is lowering everyone else’s chances of survival.  And when you’re in a position like that, survival is all that matters.

But the Hopeless Hero doesn’t care.  Sure, the dangers of the rainforest will bring certain death to some of Fitzcarraldo’s crew; sure, the majority of the conquistadors don’t want Aguirre to overthrow their commander, but the Hopeless Heroes’ self-righteous quests are larger than petty grievances.  And yet, as Dengler executes his plan precisely, getting five of the other six detainees killed in the process*, we still feel a sense of tremendous accomplishment when he is raised into the helicopter 23 days later, plagued by visions of his recently decapitated friend.  Why is that?  What do we so staunchly revere about Dengler’s selfish actions?

And that’s where Rescue Dawn’s Hero separates himself from the Herzog herd and asks a different set of questions.  When Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo fail, it’s expected.  But Dengler’s miraculous success and subsequent Hollywood ending is so surprising (raised on shoulders, carried around the deck to thunderous applause, cuing the exit music…).  With an ending blatantly happier than any of Herzog’s other 40+ features [that I’ve seen], there’s good reason to suspect it.  Dengler’s chauvinistic devotion led to his immediate freedom, but at what cost?  And what would have happened if he’d stayed in the camp?  No one else wanted to escape with him, and their own survival tactics that had worked so far.  Why was Dengler’s hard-headed ideology the correct one to enact?

Yes, for narrative simplicity, right before the escape, we’re told someone overheard the guards talking about murdering the prisoners and abandoning their posts, and this information begrudgingly turns everyone to Dengler’s side.  But that doesn’t justify the rigid infatuation with escaping – blindly believing that his survival schema has more legs than any of the others’.

Due to the realistic nature of this topic, I want to say a quick disclaimer:  I have never been in a POW camp; I have never been to war; and I am in no way trying to demean the actions of a man who is universally considered a true hero.  Dieter Dengler most certainly was a hero, both in life and in the quasi-fictional film.  But was it merely his escape that proved his heroism?  Was Duane Martin any less of a hero, surviving for almost two years in the camp?  Or Gene DeBruin for almost three?  Dengler wanted out, but so did everyone else.  And though his plan did theoretically save one other person (as Pisidhi Indradat was eventually freed again in 1967), we’ll never know how things would’ve turned out for the other five if they’d stayed.

Regardless of the morality of Dengler’s choices, Rescue Dawn poses significant questions in the role of Herzog’s Hopeless Hero.  What are the consequences and repercussions when the hopeless don’t fail?  Would we feel differently about Fitzcarraldo if he’d become a rubber baron himself?  Or if Aguirre had found El Dorado, becoming indelibly embedded in history?  Herzog has asserted throughout his career that the fate of the ever-devoted Hero to fail.  Rescue Dawn posits something completely different: What happens when the Hopeless Hero is given reason to hope?

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* - This statement is perhaps a bit misleading.  First, in the film, there were only five other detainees.  And second, the history is unclear, but provides a convincing argument for the fate of the other prisoners. Besides Air America kicker, Pisidhi Indradat – who was recaptured after 33 days in the jungle – none of the other prisoners have ever been found nor deaths confirmed or denied.  And the speculative reports of DeBruin’s fate are shaky at best.  Please read the reports yourself if you feel I’m misrepresenting anything.  However, the world of the film leaves the other prisoners’ futures unresolved, but bleak at best.