Little Dieter Needs to Fly

I saw the documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and I was thrilled and fascinated and shocked at the same time.

“Men are often haunted,” Werner Herzog tells us at the beginning, “they seem to be normal, but they are not.”

His documentary tells the story of such a haunted man, whose memories include being hung upside down with an ant nest over his head, and fighting a snake for a dead rat they both wanted to eat.

The man’s name is Dieter Dengler. He was born in Germany’s Black Forest. As a child, he watched his village being destroyed by American warplanes. One was so close to his attic window that for a split-second little Dieter made eye contact with the pilot flashing past. That very moment  Dieter Dengler knew that he needed to fly.

Dengler is now in his 50s, a businessman living in Northern California. He invites us into his home, carefully opening and closing every door over and over again. To be sure he is not locked in. He shows us his stores of rice, flour and honey under the floor. He is obsessed about being locked in, about having nothing to eat.

Dieter tells us his story:
As an 18-year-old, he came penniless to America. He went into the Navy to learn how to fly and flew missions over Vietnam: “That there were people down there who suffered, who died––only became clear to me after I was their prisoner.” Dieter Dengler was shot down and later became one of only seven men to escape from prison camps in Vietnam and survive. He endured tortures by his captors and from nature: dysentery, insect bites, starvation, hallucinations.

Werner Herzog’s Little Dieter Needs to Fly lets Dieter tell his own story. His English is rushed but vivid, as if he was fearful about bot having enough time. Herzog puts him in locations: His American home, his hometown in Germany, Wildberg, and in the Laotian jungle where he was shot down.
Certain memories are re-enacted: He is handcuffed by villagers, made to march through the forest, and demonstrates how he was staked down at night. “You can’t imagine what I’m thinking,” he says. “As I followed the river, there was this beautiful bear following me,” he remembers. “This bear meant death to me. It’s really ironic––the only friend I had at the end was death.” At another point, standing in front of a giant tank of jellyfish, he says, “This is basically what death looks like to me,” and Herzog’s camera moves in on the dreamy floating shapes as we hear the sad theme from “Tristan and Isolde.”

Dieter Dengler is a real man with an amazing Schwäbisch accent. He really made those experiences and won the Medal of Honor, the D.F.C and the Navy Cross.

On February 7, 2001, 35 years and six days after his shoot down over Laos, and after suffering from incurable nerve disease ALS for several years, Dieter Dengler drove his wheelchair into the local fire department and shot himself.