So after being engaged by Hayao Miyazaki's beautiful images in "Howl's Moving Castle" but being let down by the actual story, I moved on to another Christian Bale outing, this one much better. Rescue Dawn really impressed me as a movie, sounding off typical notes at the beginning but moving into something much more than a Vietnam movie. Werner Herzog's best films seem to take place in the jungle, and this is no exception. Christian Bale is incredible as the extremely likeable Dieter Dengler, but the real star of the movie is the jungle. I would think that if the movie took place in a typical prison, a la Shawshank, it would lack the awe and timbre of the jungle that really drive the movie. My favorite moment involved Dieter and Duane on the river, with Dieter pushing the childlike Duane on the raft. After their near miss with the waterfall, they sit together and help pick enormous REAL leeches off each other. This part not only captured the loving bond between the two, but also showed the exotic dangers and quirks of the jungle. Herzog seems to have a love and deep fascination for wildlife; when Gene says there are snakes and tigers out there, Herzog wants to back what he says. Herzog's camera seems just as interested in the flora and fauna as it is on the characters. This shot, especially, deserves some attention. Dieter and Duane meet up with Gene and Proset, two of the other escapees. Both get in an argument and split paths, and the camera watches Gene a bit as he walks away, and then looks up to show the top of the embankment that they were hiding under. Why does he do this? Is he showing that someone could have been up there watching? Should they have headed up there to see which way to go? Is Herzog suggesting to look to the skies for rescue? Does he just think that the rocky undergrowth of the surface looks beautiful and therefore deserves to be filmed? I don't know, but I was attracted to his need to let the camera notice certain things that most cameras do not. The caterpillar crawling on the leaf, the snake sliding into the water (which, to my knowledge, Bale really is struggling not to get bit by when he holds it up in the air), Herzog has an attention to the animals that reminds me of Terrence Malick's "Thin Red Line".

Oh, and, by the way, the performances are just wonderful. Bale in particular, but I didn't notice any weak links. To see Dieter smile at the end as he's being rescued not once, but twice, emotionally jolted me. The smile looked too big on his sunken face.