The Ryerson theatre was jammed full last night for the world premiere of Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn (tiff | imdb), a film retelling of his documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly. Werner Herzog himself was there, as we two of the three American stars: Christian Bale and Jeremy Davies. Actually, Herzog was standing in the middle of the theatre chatting with people when we arrived, so it was funny to hear a guy behind us was telling his friends how much he loved Herzog and would try to get an autograph when he entered the theatre. Nellie turned around and pointed out that Herzog was the balding gentleman standing right over there in the blue jacket; the fanboy took off in search of an autograph without even so much as a thank you. Nice. Anyway, he got his autograph.

The film is, by Herzog’s own admission, a companion piece to Little Dieter Needs To Fly, and is — in my opinion — inferior to the documentary. Rescue Dawn is good in its own right, but it’s the story that makes it so, not the acting, the directing or the cinematography; for the real story of Dieter Dengler, you have to hear it from the man himself. I suspect Herzog felt compelled to tell the story of the interesting, inspiring man (who became his friend) to a wider audience. Hopefully the people who watch this film will then see the documentary as well, to get the whole story…which is even more fascinating in the documentary.

In the Q&A afterward Christian Bale took 5 minutes to answer one question; Jeremy Davies took about the same to answer his, but only used about 1/5 as many words as Bale. To the audience the real star was Herzog, an acknowledged master of the form and gracious to a fault. To Herzog, though, it was clear the true star of the evening was Dieter Dengler.

[tags]tiff, toronto international film festival, rescue dawn[/tags]