A short while ago, we finally got around to watching the Herzog documentary on Dieter Dengler entitled “Little Dieter Needs To Fly.” Evidently Herzog went on to make a feature film called “Rescue Dawn” which is also about Dieter’s amazing story, but I don’t know anything about that movie except that it stars Christian Bale.
I do, however, recommend “Little Dieter Needs To Fly.” Most of the movie is Dieter narrating the events back in 1966 when he was shot down over Laos and captured, starved, beaten and tortured before he finally escaped into the jungle and was eventually rescued.
It’s a harrowing tale by itself but the film is laced throughout with typically demented Herzogian ecstatic flourishes. At one point, poor Dieter, now a much older man, reenacts his captivity in the jungle as, with his hands bound behind him, he runs down a trail pushed and prodded along by his native “captors.”
You’ll have to watch the documentary to understand why little Dieter needed to fly, but the desire originated in his experience as a young German kid in WWII.
In any event, it was a beautiful seasonally mild day in DC today, and we thought we’d go to Arlington National Cemetery to pay our respects to Dieter Dengler, the likes of whom will seldom be seen again.
Born in Baltimore and raised in Cincinnati, I have lived on both coasts and driven back and forth across the country a number of times. I now have the "midlife opportunity" to do so on two wheels.
Recent Comments