It's a little weird to be sitting and wondering how to say that the film you saw last night -- the new one by Werner Herzog, your favourite filmmaker ever -- kinda sucked.Rescue Dawn -- the real-life story of U.S. fighter pilot Dieter Dengler, a German-American shot down and captured in Laos during the early days of the Vietnam War -- played at the Embassy last night and its 2+ hours really dragged. I was almost glad when it was done.
Putting it into context, though -- (1) I have seen Herzog's documentary on the same story, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, a goodly number of times -- so I knew the story almost backwards, thereby rendering the dramatised version free of almost all suspense, or uncertainty as to how things would pan out; (2) for some reason I really can't stand that Jeremy Davies guy; and (c) the jingoistic "U S A! U S A!" ending grated and frankly seemed in poor taste given the current global political climate. (Or am I just over-sensitised to that?)
I have to forgive Herzog because never before have I watched one of his 50-odd feature or documentary films that I didn't -- at the very least -- think was pretty bloody good. Indeed most of the time I'm perfectly happy to bandy about the term "genius" in relation to his work. Everyone is allowed to slip-up from time-to-time. So it goes. And I will concede that visually, the film was a delight to watch.
Lumiere Reader reviewed the film here and here, and didn't really seem to like it that much either. I gotta say, however, in response to Tim Wong's piece, that I remember no scene with no fucking grizzly bears. Curious and curiouser.
2 comments:
I'm convinced the unnerving rah-rah ending was the producers, not Herzog. Someone told me he tried to shoot all the scenes in a single take so they couldn't re-edit them into a Hollywood action film. Apparently they'd wait until he'd gone and then reshoot stuff so they could.
Hi Stephen,
Not having seen the original doco yet (I'm planning to watch it sometime soon) I guess my viewing, and hence my review, reflects that lack of comparative analysis. I think most of your comments are fair – I, like many, am also often unimpressed by remakes, or films of books I have read – but from my perspective the film had more positives than negatives.
Don't get me wrong, I actually found several scenes embarrassing to watch, marvelling to find them in a festival film – let alone one with Herzog's name attached to it. I didn’t find the ending politically insensitive so much as just god-awfully cheesy. That particular scene is what inspired the “Seagal” reference.
Cheers,
Jacob.
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