In the atypical war movies Ten Canoes and Rescue Dawn, nature is ever-present as witness, as accessory, as enemy. The ostensibly primitive people in Ten Canoes, a marvelous Aboriginal fable directed by Rolf de Heer and set a millennium ago, connect their existence and their spirituality to the land. The hero of Werner Herzog’s gripping P.O.W. escape movie Rescue Dawn, set 40 years ago in southeast Asia, finds it a tougher challenge surviving the jungle than surmounting his captors.
As I watched both films, I couldn’t get Terence Malick’s vision of man’s impact on the environment out of my head. That surprised me, frankly, for I’m not a fan of his World War II flick, The Thin Red Line, or his John Smith-Pocahontas epic, The New World. Malick gives us a lot of shots of flora and fauna in those movies, not as eye candy but to show us what will soon become “collateral damage” in the battle for democracy or the march of progress. Nature is not a remote concept in those films but a vital life force, with full and equal claim to the planet.
In Ten Canoes, nature functions as balance itself. The film casts itself as a story within a story within a story, gently pulling us back through time to a world without machines. An elder of the tribe, aware that a young buck covets one of his wives, relates a long cautionary tale about the adverse effects of jealousy on a previous Aborigine. That otherwise fine fellow mistakenly blamed a mysterious stranger for his wife’s disappearance; he then committed an unprovoked and unnecessary act of violence that, in accordance with the laws of society, boomeranged on him.
One could read Ten Canoes as a metaphor for George W. Bush’s rash invasion of Iraq, and the pointless loss of life it precipitated. But the film is so steeped in Aboriginal culture, so authentic to its place and its period, that I don’t think that’s what the filmmakers intended. Its lessons are universal, and are intended for anyone who would let ego, self-righteousness and anger coalesce into violence. If that’s not you, Ten Canoes is still well worth seeing for its gracefulness, patience and enveloping cinematography of swamps and grasslands.
Werner Herzog has never been a political filmmaker; he favors the dreams and will of the individual over the compromise and consensus of institutions and groups. That’s a problem with Rescue Dawn, which is otherwise of a piece with his enormous oeuvre. Based on actual events, the film recounts the nightmare adventure of Dieter Dengler, a German-born, American-trained Navy pilot who was shot down on his very first mission — the secret bombing of Laos. (Herzog originally told the story in the 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly.)
