1960s Ideas: How does newness come into the world?

Little Dieter Needs to Fly (Werner Herzog 1997) is a very intimate and non judgemental representation of the Vietnam War. The war infact takes a back seat to the life of Deiter Dengler who end up in Vietnam because it was the only way he, an immigrant without money and a formal education, would be trained as a pilot. This approach constrasts with the war itself which was unavoidably political, with successive U.S. governments determined to take a stand on what it saw as the spread of Communism.
The photographs coming out of the trenches depicted a new type of war. Vietnam's countryside and the underground communities of the Viet Cong meant that for those on the ground it was essentially guerilla warfare. For those above it meant bombing and burning villages made of wood and straw instead of a metropolis.

From the Zalewski article you can see the importance of nature in Herzogs approach to film making and his life in general. During the making of 'Rescue Dawn,' the Hollywood adaption of Dengler's tale starring Christian Bale, Herzog had the camera follow Bale closely through the thick jungle growth avoiding wide and overhead shots in order to capture the oppressiveness of the environment. The annecdote about Herzogs search for the perfect vista scene also demonstrates his commitment to caputuring the natural beauty of a landscape. Herzog forcing a hand held shot because setting up a tracking shot would take too long and the light which made it a 'high intensity landscape' would be lost. The landscape is also important in 'Little Deiter needs to fly' . Although 'Rescue Dawn' was to follow, Herzog originally choses to have Dengler re-enact his time in Vietnam rather than an actor playing young Dieter. In order to convey what it feels like to be trapped in the jungle or a prison camp Herzog follows old Dieter as he relives his ordeal capturing not only the impact of this foreign environment but also the physicality and emotions involved. Herzog could have chosen to have Dengler tell his tale whilst at a war memorial for example this would have created an entirely different film. It would have been about the war, about his triumphant rescue and not about what it feels like to be trapped in a jungle or in a prison camp which is what Herzog is interested in.

Links can be made between the use of graphic depictions of the Vietnam war by both the U.S. government trying to rally support and protest groups against the war and the emmergence of a questioning of the 'truth in photography' in the 1960s. In this period it was pointed out that the photographic negative was open to manipulation and that photographic images could be used to manipulate. This was also true of cinematic film as demonstrated by Brakhage's work created by etching and attaching objects directly to the film.

Barthes suggested that photography was recording both absence and presence simultaneously. "What I see has been here, in this place which extends between infinity and the subject (operator or spectator), it has been here and immediately separated;it has also been absolutely irrefutably present and yet already differred."

No longer was still photography and implicitly film capturing truth in the moment no longer were they purely aesthetic. Herzog is clearly against his films belonging purely to the relms of aethetics, promising to stop anything on his film (Rescue Dawn) the moment it became purely aesthetic.

In this line of thought the accepted truth was no longer trustworthy neither were the roles assigned to us. The photographer has the power to manipulate but once the photograph is taken it is immediately separated from their control. The observer then has the power to see what they want to see in the image. The observer no longer had to be passive. These ideas are mirrored in litterature where the author was proclaimed dead and their control over their work once it had been written was questioned. The power to manipulate words and meaning was transferred to the previously passive reader. Similarly the audience at the cinema were no longer seen as the receipients of a directers or prossibly a studios new masterpiece. Reactions of cinema goers were extended beyond liking and disliking. These new roles however did not go unchallenged. If one worked beyond the confines of the norm, of language, of photography and film, this power struggle could be reversed or redefined.

Herzog's film making technique reflects the questioning of the roles of directer and viewer. He doesn't just want his audience to watch, he wants to feel. The way in which he is compelled to be his own stand could in part be in order to understand what characters feel and also what he wants his audience to feel. This could also be interpreted as a way of making the scenes real memories which can not be erased later on in an editing suite because from the Zalewski article it is also obvious that it is not just the directer dictating what he wants his audience to see and feel but also the studios who want an action film with mass appeal.


What does this have to do with cinema?
The new cinematic techniques explored during the 1960s were not driven by technological advances but by the new way in which the world was conceived and perceived. Giorgio Agamben ... the gesture belongs to the realm of ethics and politics and not simply to that of aestheitic. Film does not only capture acting but gestures. Film can capture the truth of a gesture the way in which photography, which can only imply the movement and language which is restricted by its rules cannot.

'Little Deiter needs to fly' is an attempt to capture the truth of the past not merely retell it in the present as historical fact. Herzog has Dengler relive his experiences in Vietnam rather than get an actor to play him. We travel back in time with Dengler until we are brought into the present again. Although he avoids politics it is Herzogs ethics in not judging Dieter's experience that elevates and makes his also aesthetically pleasing documentary memorable.

A closing thought: the cinema that was created in the 1960s can not be lead directly back to one thought or one concept of the world but are the result of the possibility of a different world. Thus raising the question of the impact of these pieces today where hope for a better place is dwindling and the horrors of Vietnam are being repeated exposing the lack of change that has been achieved.

References:
Giorgio Agamben, 'Notes on Gesture' in Means without End: Notes on Politics. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino (Trans.) (University of Minnesota Press, [1996] 2000): 49-50.
Michel Foucault, 'Preface' in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. (New York: vintage, 1970)
Laura Mulvey, 'The Index and the uncanny' in Time and the Image. Carolyn Bailey Gill (ed) (Manchester University Press, 2000)
Daniel Zalewski, 'The Ecstatic Truth: Werner Herzog's Quest', The New Yorker. (April 24, 2006)