Little Dieter needs to Fly (1998)

We first see Dieter in his house atop a hill outside of San Francisco (he has lived in America for 40 years; the film is in English, there are no subtitles). He talks about how important doors are to him, that he can never take them for granted because when he was in the prison camp he was not able to open or close any doors. He talks about always having plenty of food in the house, even storing extra in the basement, because he never wants to go hungry again.

Then we are in Germany, in the small town where he grew up. He watched planes flying over his town as a boy during World War II. One flew very close to his upstairs window and from that moment he knew he needed to fly. He says he didn't want to go to war, he only wanted to fly. Yet the airplanes he saw as a child, the ones that created the dream in him, were war planes. This is not a simple story. Dieter came to America when he was 18 years old, with no money, speaking only a few words of English, and almost immediately joined the Air Force. But he never got near an airplane. Over time as he learned how things work, he figured out what he needed to do. He moved to California and went to college, living out of a VW van. Then he joined the Navy where at last he learned to fly. He was sent to Vietnam and soon thereafter was shot down over Laos.

To give you some idea of the structure of the film, it is essentially the story of where Dieter's desire to fly led him, told more or less chronologically beginning in his childhood up to the present. We don't learn anything else about Dieter or his life. The story is completely focussed on this one aspect of his life. And Werner Herzog mostly lets Dieter tell his own story. When he talks about his childhood, he is in Germany, talking and showing us around the town. When he talks about his time in the prison camp, the filming takes place in an unnamed Asian country (the production notes at the end say it was indeed Laos). There is some reenactment, such as Dieter having his hands tied behind his back and walking through jungle. This is the sort of thing that could go very wrong in a movie, but in Werner Herzog's hands it works beautifully. It's not clear whether the villagers taking part in the reenactments know what is going on, or what they think. It's not clear whether being there and reexperiencing these events is helping Dieter chase away his demons or making matters worse. All this adds to the dreamlike and mythic quality of the movie. This is a very big story. And what makes the movie so successful, is Dieter himself. He is a master storyteller. At home in San Francisco he is sad and haunted. But in the jungle he is filled with energy and there is a sense of urgency to his speaking, as if he realizes how much he needs to tell his story. I could not take my eyes from the screen and could have listened to him talk for hours.

And talk he does. About the three week walk to the prison camp, about conditions in the camp, about their plans to escape. There is great attention to detail, such as showing how they got out of their handcuffs, and showing a map of the camp to describe how their plan was to work. As harrowing as the details of the camp were, even more difficult to hear was the long walk barefoot through the jungle after the escape. Dieter sits cross-legged on the dock of the Mekong River, recounting this journey, quietly but forcefully telling his story. I promise that this will make your heart ache.

Don't look for any reflection on the events. Never does Werner Herzog ask Dieter whether he is sorry he pursued his dream with such single-minded determination. We are left to draw our own conclusions. Some of the timing of events is unclear. We're not sure how long he was in Vietnam before he got shot down, nor how long he was held prisoner, but it seems to be less than six months. We're told that he took early retirement from the Navy but we're not told when he retired or whether he continued to serve in Vietnam after he was rescued. But these are not criticisms. This movie is made up of complex levels of dreams within dreams and these slight omissions add to that mood. Herzog has done a brilliant job of putting together an amazing story. This is one of the finest movies I've seen in a long, long time.

In this film, the good natured subject starts talking at the beginning and never stops -- Herzog has found someone perhaps even more voluble than he is -- and the audience is perfectly set up by his cheerful good naturedness and lucid observations, because by the end of the film we discover just how unimaginably damaged this person has been by life. The unfolding final images of the film are completely striking in the usual Herzogian sense (if you've seen something like "Lessons of Darkness" you'll have some sense of what to expect), but the meaning is ambiguous: is this a kind of heaven for little boys that love to fly? Or is this a hi-tech graveyard ...

Like Herzog's best (e.g. Even Dwarves, Aguirre, Nosferatu, Lessons and My Best Fiend), you simply cannot take your eyes off this movie.

Have fun!