SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

wandereramor Little Dieter Needs to Fly tells the story of Dieter Dengler, an Air Force pilot who was shot down in Vietnam and miraculously survived in the jungle for quite some time. In other hands this narrative could become maudlin, melodramatic, and jingoistic, but fortunately we have Werner Herzog and his trademark thickly-accented narration to remind us that all in life is futile. We have the perverse, hopeless landscape of a film like Lessons of Darkness, but Dieter's story gives us at least a mild hope of escaping that world. At times the power of the story and Dengler's matter-of-fact recounting of it overpowers Herzog's heavy stylizing, and a times they work together. It's a quite interesting dynamic.Some of the filming choices don't quite work -- take, for instance, the decision to have Dengler re-enact some aspects of his captivity with confused-looking Vietnamese villagers -- whereas others are downright moving -- the Mongolian throat-music, or the final shot of the field full of airplanes, suggesting how the government weaponizes and exploits the childish desire to fly. There are also times where one could accuse the film of being a simple "inspiring" survival story, but I think for the most part it rises above that genre while simultaneously serving as the best example of it.

futures-1 Another Werner Herzog documentary. How he manages to find these TRUE stories, I do not know, but it must consume him. His film "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" was created from the diary of the Spanish Priest who accompanied Coronado's search for the City of Gold, Eldorado. His film "The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser" (also known as "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" or "All for One, and God Against All") was created from a centuries-old file (1828) found in the "city" hall of small German village. "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" is the ASTOUNDING life story of a German boy who, during the deadly bombings of Germany in the last years of WWII, decided he wanted to fly aeroplanes, and to accomplish this he must move to America. Although thrown off the path for a few years (but learning skills he never expected to NEED), he eventually found himself flying in 1966 – for America – over Viet Nam. This is the story of a man who was shot down, deprived, beaten, tortured, and left for dead more than once, until he didn't know what was real and what was his imagination. At all. How he survived, what he remembers, and what life was like for him over the next 30 years is the stuff of breath-taking pain and awe. TRUST Herzog. See ALL his films.

RoadRunnerr The questions and answers of the human spirit are all here in this masterfully crafted historical documentary. The shear beauty and horror of one mans walk through life, are revealed in totality. Dieter and Herzog are combined and connected through a mental maze that has been transformed into a single straight hallway which the walls have been plastered with images created by one mans characterization of himself by the vibrations of his own vocal chords. This film, for about 80 minutes, have discovered a new dimension of storytelling. What do I call this apparently new sense. Only God knows, after all, isn't a MIRACLE something that God does for us, but chooses to remain ANONYMOUS?This is a requirement to see. If you like to experience the lovely horror of war, this documentary will cleanse your soul to the marrow.

stephenksmith Werner Herzog again explores the psyche of a man. In "Little Dieter...", we meet an effervescent, brilliant man who survived the war in Bavaria seeing starvation and strange sights, moved to the U.S. and fulfilled his dream of being a flier. War, food, death, survival, hoarding, planes, heads coming off... how one American is born. Herzog again sees madness as plane of existence and the surreal blends with the poignant as Herzog himself narratives this psychic travelogue of a German becoming an American who flies prop planes in a late 20th century war where the culmination of technology, pilgrimage and eating out of garbage cans with spoons is melded with constant optimism into a man redefined into American. As always with Herzog we are faced with florid madness, brilliance and what is man in the face of his own excesses, societal and personal. We laugh and cringe and are amazed at this man. Where else for this man but America?