Angry Family Members: The Truth

Debruinhein,

I saw the movie before knowing about the controversy. As far as the art of film craft is concerned, I thought it was well done.

That being said, I do believe that if you are making a movie based upon true events that, unless it prominently displays the disclaimer that it has been fictionalized, it should stick to the facts as closely as possible. Sometimes all the facts aren't known and some fictionalization is necessary to "glue" the rest of the story together. But if the facts are known, they should not be misrepresented.

I do not know what the facts of this case are and I can make no personal judgment on them. Ironically, I found the portrayal of Gene so interesting that I started to research him after seeing the movie and thus came across the controversy over his portrayal. I do respect poetic license. But in non-fiction I think portraying the truth is of tantamount importance.

I saw the movie and although I liked it, I felt it could have been better. I wanted to find out more about Dieter Dengler and the other POW and after researching the internet I found that the movie did not accurately portray the POW and their escape. I saw the video where both Dieter Dengler and Pisidhi Indradat recalled Gene as being a brave and kind man who refused to leave an ailing prisoner behind. Dengler and Indradat admitted that neither one of them wanted to escape with the sick POW in tow because they felt this would slow them down. Dengler even tried to disuade Gene from bringing the sick prisoner along but Gene said he would rather die with his friend than to leave him behind. Now that is a real hero! If Mr.Herzog was so concerned about making a profitable and crtitcally aclaimed film he should have stuck to the facts. His movie would have been all the better for it. I can understand why the DeBruin family is upset with the movie's inaccurate portrayal of Gene. Not only have they endured his loss and uncertainty about his actual fate (one site stated that he was recaptured and reported to be still alive in 1968 and possibly even after the war ended. However, our government refused to "recognize" the Pathet Lao and would not negotiate for the POW's release, thus leaving many of its men to die in Laotian POW camps) but now as to add insult upon injury this film portrays Gene DeBruin very differently from the way he was according to the people who knew him. Only someone quite insensitive would fail to see why the family wasn't exactly elated by this film.

Truly.

"You're truly a callous assh*le. " completely discredited your post. You're truly a callous assh*le.

[deleted]

I want to apologize for the posters here who don't understand your point of view (even those who would be outraged at my apologizing for them), and stand beside the people who have spoken with compassion and sense. If nothing else, I hope you can know that from my experience with this film, I will never again even slightly believe a portrayal of a real person is anything but complete fiction until I have a pile of evidence proving it's not.

I first heard about this film during a film festival last year, and I remember the way it was presented in the material I saw---as a feature film of the story originally told in Herzog's documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. When I went to see this film, that's the impression I had of the movie. The whole "based on" and "inspired by" material must have come later.

I thought the film was pretty good. Compelling. But I had some problems understanding why certain characters behaved the way they did (many of them, including Dieter), what the history of their particular situation was, and how the dates of things worked out, so I went home and immediately looked for more details of the story. Additional details, I thought at the time, because from what I understood, what the film presented was, for the most part, true. Maybe with some shifts, compression, or slight changes for flow, clarity, creation of tension/drama, or time restraints. I didn't think a "dramatization" (because that's what I'd seen it called, not a "fictionalization") of a documentary would be a complete fabrication simply using real names and places, as this film was.

If it had presented itself as a fictional Vietnam War drama, and had given fictional names to its characters, that would have been fine, and I would have stuck with my original assessment of the film. To claim it's retelling a true account in any way, shape, or form is nothing but absolute rot. The only true elements seem to be names, locations, and the existence and/or use of certain items. I know that by capitalizing the word "truth," one poster was suggesting there's a greater goal, some Platonic ideal of Truth nobly sought through this film, but that's a hollow defense. If the film's story itself provides the "Truth," there should be no need to use real names. And no understanding of a greater truth is provided in this film's twisting of real events---with real danger and real heroes---into lies that overinflate one of them and denigrate the rest, except the understanding of how far a director will go in swindling the public. Herzog has his bizarre ideas about no truth existing except through an artist's manipulation, but if he's claiming to tell a story of true events using real people, there's another truth there that other people actually recognize, and it's far more important than Herzog's one-man philosophical definitions.

As for the people who say they understood the character called Gene in the film and don't think it was such a bad image of a man, I don't believe that for a minute. Sure, you can make allowances for that character and try to excuse the behavior this way or that, but did you respect him, like him, admire him? Lots of people are depicted as being kind of crazy in POW camps, and that's understandable, but this character was portrayed as really far gone and worse, a traitor to his fellow prisoners. Some posters have said maybe the testimonies about the real man's behavior in the camp were prettied up to protect his family (I don't understand why people would be prettying up things in sworn testimony only later revealed through the Freedom of Information Act, but whatever), and that no one could really know what conditions and situations in the camp were like. Do those posters realize they're suggesting that Herzog's fictional imaginings are better possibilities of truth than actual statements made by people who were there or people who really knew the people involved? That suggestion is preposterous beyond belief, and even more insulting. The Gene character was clearly crafted by Herzog for drama, complication, and opposition from within. He was intended to be a blight and and a hindrance, and he was one to a degree where it was so hard to believe I just didn't even want the man there. I found myself not caring if the character survived, because his actions were so inane. I felt terrible about this because at the time I thought he was a real person, though now I realize he was not at all the real person of Eugene DeBruin. I immediately looked for more information when I got home---I wanted to see what had happened to him; if he got home and realized how bizarre he'd been in the POW camp, or maybe discovered when he got home that he'd been sick with a brain disease or something. I was horrified to see I'd been hoping for the elimination of a real person just as heroic as the deliberately chosen hero of the film; that I'd been totally misled into believing that other real hero, Eugene DeBruin, was a sick, selfish person willing to put everyone else in danger to serve his own wild notions. The only really sick, selfish person is Herzog, that he would even think of depicting such an upstanding and heroic person in such an appalling way.

I did immediately find the site with the truth, http://rescuedawnthetruth.com, although I think there should be more information directly in the body of the Wiki article about the film, as there was before a revision of the page on 7/20/07. But to the posters who suggest that having a website with the truth is a fine solution for Herzog's lies and misrepresentation---the fact that the truth is on the website is beside the point. It shouldn't even be necessary. The truth should have either been attached to the real names Herzog used, or it should be irrelevant in a completely fictionalized film with fictional characters and no real people misrepresented. Not everyone is going to go home and look up the true story. And not looking up the truth doesn't mean they'll forget the Herzog depiction, either. You could be talking about Vietnam 10 years from now and say "oh, I saw a movie once about a real guy who escaped a POW camp---there was a guy from Oregon in the prison camp who was such an a-hole!" And even if you didn't remember his name, that's besmirching the memory of a real person. It's passing on the foul disrespect that Herzog showed. And anyone who heard you or anyone else talking about the film who looked at the IMDB page to see who the a-hole was would see the name of the role, which uses the name of a real person in a real setting, in a way that directly implies it is the specific Eugene Debruin who was really at the POW camp with Dieter Dengler. With no note or explanation that it's a person who Herzog chose to misrepresent and malign for no reason other than thinking it would make his film more tense or exciting (and it didn't even do that).

The friend with whom I saw the film was totally shocked when I told her almost everything in the film was either total fabrication or a very twisted bit of truth, even though we'd both been very confused about many things, including how the Gene character and the other prisoners acted. It barely made sense that every heroic action was imagined, planned, and carried out by Dengler. For some reason, Herzog must have felt that Dengler was the only person who deserved any attention, credit, or accolades, and so he created a film to do expressly that, and make everyone else look stupid, useless, weak, and/or bad in the process. I was truly angry that Herzog would have presented the story in a way that manipulated me to dislike what appears to be a perfectly normal person every bit as worthy of admiration as Dieter Dengler. It would be one thing if he'd used a fictional character as a villain, but to use a real-life hero and depict him as a villain is just unforgivable. I'm glad I only spent $3 on seeing the movie, and I will never pay to see another Herzog movie again. I'm also telling everyone I know about Herzog's disgusting deceit, the true story he threw in the trash, and advising them that whatever they thought of Herzog in the past, with this film he's clearly gone over the edge into a land where his work no longer adds anything to people's lives and isn't worth our time. I don't need "art" from someone who can violate the sanctity of someone else's life and memory this way. If he's willing to do that, whatever he values in the world isn't what I value.

Gene DeBruin was a kind, highly intelligent, gentle man with a solid sense of morality. He wasn't perfect, but he was no idiot, either. His mother was always amazed how he earned so many A's in school without hardly cracking a book. He loved baseball, hunting, fishing, and the out of doors. He graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in Forestry and worked as a smokejumper (parachuting out of planes and putting out forest fires). He always left packages of Juicy Fruit gum in his pants pockets so his little sisters would find them when they cleaned out his pockets when doing the laundry. He made sure they would have a treat after helping their mom do the laundry for 10 kids in the old wringer washer. He sent me hand beaded slippers from Alaska. I still have them - complete with holes in the bottoms due to so much wear and tear. I won't give them up.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

Or as a Greek cynic once exclaimed walking through a graveyard and seeing inscriptions such as "here lies our beloved mother" and "our dearest and good brother", "Where are all the bad people buried?!"

This is not disrespectful, it is the truth; and I sincerely guard against this error one sees around everyday.

There are much better and more respectful ways to artistically express the message that is intended to be conveyed in Rescue Dawn.

I hope for the love of God nobody will respect that sentiment, because it essentially censors the ideas and expression of artists everywhere.

How about the new movie from Ridley Scott? It represents a real person, fully accurate throughout the movie; probably not.

Your "much better" and "more respectful" ways are not much better than the ones a dictator would enforce in regard to "artistic" representations of himself, eventhough you claim to act from "love".


"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy."

In response to: debruinhein on Sun Aug 5 2007 20:46:31

Thank you for the warm, and insightful posting which enables viewers of this film to add another dimension - an actual true one - to the already incredible story.

I understand how you and your family would be hurt to see an inaccurate portrayal of Gene, and I'm truly sorry for some of the very insensitive remarks made by some on this thread.

I enjoyed reading how Gene used to leave Juicy Fruit gum in his pants for his sisters to find - that's pretty cool.

I'm also touched that you have a special memento in the beaded slippers that you cherish.

I wish you and your family all the best.

Take care.