Last Flag Flying

LAST FLAG FLYING          B+                 

USA  (124 mi)  2017  d:  Richard Linklater

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day

It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away

Feel like my soul has turned into steel

I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal

There’s not even room enough to be anywhere

It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain

Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain

She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind

She put down in writing what was in her mind

I just don’t see why I should even care

It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, I’ve been to London and I’ve been to gay Paris

I’ve followed the river and I got to the sea

I’ve been down on the bottom of a world full of lies

I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes

Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear

It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will

I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still

Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb

I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from

Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer

It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

—Not Dark Yet, Bob Dylan, 1997, Reading Dylan as Poetry – It's Not Dark Yet 1997 | Untold Dylan

Adapted from the 2005 novel by Darryl Ponicsan, which was a sequel to his highly successful 1970 novel The Last Detail about two Navy sailors escorting a third to a beer-binged night on the town before delivering him to the brig the next morning, a film made by Hal Ashby with Jack Nicholson in one of his greatest roles in 1973, making a few prominent changes here, never feeling like a sequel, as no background knowledge is required, but shifting the emphasis from the Navy to the Marines.  While the film is a male buddy movie that becomes a road trip, it opens in a deluge of rain in 2003 as a man with a suitcase is seen taking shelter in a local dive bar in Norfolk, Virginia, where the loquacious bartender serving drinks, Sal (Bryan Cranston), a former Marine, quickly realizes the man on the barstool is “Doc” (Steve Carell), a former Navy medic, that both served in Vietnam together, but haven’t seen one another for thirty years.  After a long night of beer and cold pizza, they hit the road afterwards only to discover the third party, Mueller (Laurence Fishburne), another former Marine, has become an overly pious Reverend at a small Baptist church.  After sitting down for a home-cooked meal by his lovely wife, Ruth (Deanna Reed-Foster), Doc lays it all out there.  His wife died recently from breast cancer, while he was just notified that his Marine son Larry was killed in action while serving in Iraq.  He wants his former war buddies to accompany him as he retrieves the body for burial at Arlington National Cemetery.  It’s the kind of offer you can’t refuse, and the prelude to what follows.  Sal and Mueller immediately start butting heads, as Mueller has become a sanctified version of a church reformer, swearing away his youthful indulgences for a life in Christ, while Sal is every bit that rebellious smart aleck he was as a kid, a fast-talking goofball who drinks too much, but it’s the only thing that alleviates the pain and calms the nerves, as otherwise he’s something of a live-wire act.  Doc is the quiet and reflective one, clearly having the kind of year no one deserves, where it’s all caving in on him and is simply too much to handle alone.  However, after a few turns in the road, and a game of cat and mouse by Sal with a hell-bent truck that nearly gets them killed, an enraged Mueller unleashes a stream of profanity, returning to his former foul-mouthed self, “Mueller the Mauler,” a bonafide hell-raiser when in the service, a guy with an acquired distinction for gutter language.  “There he is!” Sal giddily exclaims,” “I thought we had lost Mueller forever.”

While the interlude music written for the film by Graham Reynolds is pretty wretched, standard indie fare bordering on elevator music, there are choice musical selections that stand out, adding poignancy to the overall experience, the first of which is from Levon Helm, the recently deceased drummer and singer from The Band, Levon Helm - Wide River To Cross - A Tribute - YouTube (4:51), a terribly sad yet inspiring song that elevates the material.  One of the true revelatory moments is viewing the grieving military families as they retrieve the caskets of dead soldiers draped in American flags at the Dover Air Force base in Delaware, images that the Bush administration refused to allow Americans to see during his administration, yet there’s an air of nobility and honor in the recognition of their service that is actually quite moving, guarded by a small Marine attachment led by Colonel Wilits (Yul Vazquez), who provides the heroic military explanation for how the young soldier died in action.  When Doc wants to view the body, the Colonel advises against it, as he was shot in the back of the head at close range, so his face is missing.  Mueller agrees that it’s better to remember him as he was, but Sal, irreverent and always stirring up trouble, tells Doc he doesn’t have to listen to Colonels any more, that he can make his own decisions.  However, he’s devastated by what he sees, overwhelmed by the sheer horror of it all.  As the others share coffee and ascertain what they can, they meet Washington (J. Quinton Johnson), a young Marine who was with Doc’s son when he was killed, offering an entirely different explanation of what happened, as it was hardly heroic, but a senseless death that could happen anywhere, made worse by the fact he was in a faraway country.  This alters Doc’s original plan, refusing to bury him at Arlington, deciding to take his body home for a family burial in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  Colonel Wilits is amazingly gracious under the circumstances, suggesting the military will transport the body free of charge, but Doc insists he’s leaving with his son.  This new resolve alters the course of the events, extending things a few extra days, where these guys are operating on-the-fly, figuring things out in the heat of the moment, all of which is too much for Mueller who needs to get back to his wife.  They decide to rent a U-Haul truck, dropping Mueller off at a bus station along the way, but Sal’s crass language at the truck rental agency raises red flags, alerting Homeland Security about these bozos with a dead body. 

Incredibly, Mueller never makes it out of the bus station, as he’s arrested on suspicious activity, quickly returned to his partners in crime, who think better of the situation, allowing the military to transport the body by train, with Wilits giving explicit instructions to Washington to guard the body and not be distracted by these old geezers, who will test his better judgment.  On the train, no longer pestered by newly developing plans, the guys settle in, opening up about their battlefield memories, comparing their experiences in Vietnam to the young guns in Iraq, with Washington opening up about losing his best friend, who turns out to be Doc’s son Larry, adding yet another layer of personal tragedy.  While these guys are critical of the flaunted authority in the Marine Corps, these guys miss the close camaraderie, remaining best of friends even after all these years, as there’s nothing in civilian life to match the intensity of the wartime experiences they share together, knowing they had each other’s backs, where it all comes back to them, unleashed like a volcanic force, where once opened, there’s no shutting it off.  Most of all, these guys are incensed at getting lied to, much like Pat Tillman’s military family in The Tillman Story (2010), where the government lied about what happened to their son.  This is reflective of military families, who don’t always admire the glorified patriotism on display at Fox News or in Hollywood exaggerations of heroism like Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (2014), as that’s not reflective of their sons and daughters, who deserve better.  Yet these men have been keeping their own hidden secret, recalling their own skeletons in the closet when they screwed up, resulting in a horrifying experience for one unfortunate soldier in their unit.  Deciding to come clean and finally tell the truth, they decide to apologize to that soldier’s family.  In one of the best scenes of the film, none other than Cicely Tyson answers the door, the picture of grace and dignity, where these men don’t have the heart to tell her the truth, that perhaps only they know, as she’s believed the lie that was told to her, framing his death in a more heroic fashion, allowing her to believe the myth over reality.  This kind of thing must happen all the time, with this film asking the age-old question that was raised in the John Ford film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), is it better to believe the myth or the truth, where there is no easy one–fits–all answer.  With recurrent images on television of Saddam Hussein being flushed out of his hiding place in a spider-hole, offering a temporary euphoria spreading across the nation, what’s clear is these men are still haunted by their experiences in ways they could never imagine, damaged beyond repair, but it’s something they rarely speak of.  This film pays homage to men like these by paying tribute to their innermost humanity, scarred and wounded souls, but older and wiser, revealing the better part of their human nature.  The film offers conflicting feelings about whether it’s all worth it, questioning the meaning of patriotism with so many personal sacrifices returning in flag-draped coffins, offering no easy answers, but Linklater has crafted yet another indelible image of the American character, with Bob Dylan’s raspy voice sounding over the end credits, one of his best late career works, offering his own poetic vision, Bob Dylan - Not Dark Yet - YouTube (6:26).     

Arrival

ARRIVAL           B               

USA  (116 mi)  2016  ‘Scope  d:  Denis Villeneuve       Official site

Language is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.

—Louise Banks (Amy Adams)

An old-fashioned love story dressed up in a Spielbergian sci-fi package, like the return of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977), where the director has formulated an intriguing opening and closing, which stand out for their novel originality, yet the middle seems to drag under the weight of standard military operations that seem to always suggest anything that can go wrong will go wrong.   Only in the movies do people actually live in these picture-perfect locations, like a gorgeous, heavily windowed home on the side of a commercially undeveloped lake, where there’s no neighbors to speak of and a stunning landscape for as far as the eye can see.  It’s an idyllic place of retreat that becomes synonymous with home, the place you raise your children and return to night after night when returning from work.  In this setting, to the elegiac music of Max Richter - On the Nature of Daylight - YouTube (6:14) that opens and closes the film, also used in a dream sequence in Scorsese’s SHUTTER ISLAND (2010), a narrator announces in somber tones that “I used to think this was the beginning of your story,” with this being the place where a certain child was born, as Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams)  announces “We are so bound by time…by its order…These are the days that define the story of your life,” as we witness a fast-moving flashback montage of her young daughter Hannah’s life quickly developing through childhood with her single mom until she dies mysteriously of a rare illness.  “Now I’m not sure I believe in beginnings and endings.”  What follows is an indication that there’s a different beginning, something significant that comprises the majority of the film, though we are caught off-guard, wondering if this all happened in the past, or in the future, or if time has somehow been altered in some way.  Recollections of her daughter occur throughout as the film takes an eerie shift to aliens landing in twelve different spots on the globe, where linguist expert Dr. Banks is whisked to the scene by military escort along with physicist Dr. Ian Connelly (Jeremy Renner) to help communicate with these extraterrestrials.  Based on Ted Chiang’s acclaimed 1998 short story entitled Story of Your Life, winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1999, the film has been adapted by screenwriter Eric Heisserer, where Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, fresh from his Hollywood action thriller Sicario (2015) that takes us into the heart of the Mexican drug cartels, Enemy (2013) , a curiously compelling indie film where a supposed body double turns into an allegorical nightmare of a coming apocalypse, Prisoners (2013), an intriguingly cast Hollywood vigilante movie that veers into torture porn, and 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #7 Incendies, arguably the best of the bunch, a search through a war-torn Middle East for the missing truth about one’s mother, all of which in some way are an exploration of grief.   

From a sparsely populated university class by Dr. Banks on the Portuguese language where what few students showed up are completely glued to their cellphones following news updates on the alien landings, panic breaks out across the globe, as students walk out on class, the stock market plunges, fights break out in public, riots ensue, end of the world cults declare a coming apocalypse, while TV demagogues call for radical actions, and everyone immediately calls their moms, as this event has a way of altering the world order, with various nations developing their own way of responding to this unknown presence.  While the book never ventures into a military response, that’s simply not the Hollywood way, who after all, sent the military after King Kong (1933), laying its imprint all over this picture that might have been so much better without it.  Curiously, the film never shows that actual aliens landing, but instead follows the fierce public outcry, showing images of giant-sized, vertically hanging blimps, showing no signs of releasing toxic gas, while at the same time there is no follow up response from the extraterrestrial creatures, who never leave their ships and are content to sit there passively.  By the time Dr. Banks arrives to a rural Montana farmland, a military protocol has been established, as they are the only units allowed close to the landing sites, as the public has been prevented from being anywhere near them, which is why television figures so prominently in the ensuing panic.  While there are military officers constantly monitoring the alien ships, Dr. Banks and Dr. Connelly are escorted to the site by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), revealing as little as possible about their mission, but basically wanting to know why are they here? While Connelly immediately goes into a litany of mathematical possibilities that will be unearthed by their successful interplanetary travels, it’s Dr. Banks that insists upon basic communication first before they get ahead of themselves.  Therein lies her specialty, claiming being in the presence of the aliens helps her understand how they communicate.  Dressed in bulky biohazard spacesuits, where they are hosed down afterwards to prevent contamination, they are hoisted into the interior of the alien ship, as they soon learn a lower door opens every 18 hours for visitation.  The anticipation of the initial contact has an extraordinary suspense factor, as no one, including the audience, knows what to expect.  This aspect is deftly handled by the director, elevating the level of expectation to unseen heights, which is arguably the best part of the film.  Once inside, they reach what looks like an elevator shaft that they must ascend, where surprisingly they are able to climb up themselves, as gravity disappears, though they stumble from the newness of it all and the bloated awkwardness of their suits.  Their destination is enclosed with a large window panel containing the only light, behind which the aliens appear, as if rising out of a haze of smoke, strangely resembling the arachnid creatures hovering over the city seen in Enemy (2013) .

While this is the third time the director has used music from Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, cinematography by Bradford Young, who also shot Selma (2014) and  A Most Violent Year (2014), there are sounds emanating from the aliens, perhaps resembling oceanic creatures like whales, yet no one has been able to make any sense out of them.  Described as heptapods, for their seven dangling legs, they actually resemble jellyfish, but the question remains for viewers, how would any of us attempt to start a conversation?  Dr. Banks chooses to start with the word “human” written on a notecard, holding it out for them to see.  The movements of the creatures is a bit unexpected, as they have a star-like appendage at the end of one leg that emits a cloud of black ink, like a squid, which mysteriously assembles into a circular image with slight variations around the edges, like pieces of growing ivy, making each image distinct, which is how they convey their language.  Back in the science lab afterwards, she and Dr. Connelly pour over the images they received trying to make some sense out of it, returning again 18 hours later for another visit.  We lose any sense of time, as the visits are compacted, though Dr. Banks continues to collect her images while we continue to get mixed messages about what’s happening around the world, as China and Russia are growing increasingly irritated and militarily belligerent, where they fear the aliens are threatening their authority, wanting to send a message through gunfire.  Dr. Banks disagrees, thinking they have initiated no dangerous acts of any kind, and should be understood accordingly.  But as the military of each nation seems to be in charge, the mere presence of these extraterrestrials is sending the world into a frenzy, while the real question is more about humans, asking how are we going to learn to understand “the other” without being afraid and resorting to violence?  This is perhaps the central theme of the film, all part of the learning curve of discovery, as the military reviews any and all progress being made, holding a heavy hand over what happens next.  Over time, Dr. Banks collects what amounts to a working vocabulary, with each message conveying multiple meanings, where she marvels at their originality, claiming “They can write a complex sentence in two seconds.”  But when the military insists she finally ask why are they here, the answer is surprising, “offer weapon,” which ambiguously may have multiple meanings, as Banks feels weapon may also mean tool, while Col. Weber reminds her, “Remember what happened to the aborigines.  A more advanced race nearly wiped them out,” but the aggressiveness associated with the word “weapon” sends military units around the world into heightened paranoia, disconnecting from worldwide communication systems, basically signing off into radio silence, first one nation, but eventually everyone, where no one wants to share what they’ve learned, overwhelmed by a sense of national self-preservation. 

With rogue military units on the loose, Banks’ missions appears to be spiraling out of control, especially after receiving a much larger image with hundreds more symbols, something they had never seen before that leaves them completely bewildered.  Connelly comes up with the idea that maybe each of the twelve sites is communicating only partial messages, which need to be combined to make sense, requiring mutual cooperation if they are to be understood.  Of course, that’s not the way military operations see things, and they uniquely, instead of scientists, have control of the operations, while around the globe their heavy-handed approach is winning out.  Unfortunately, this military angle diminishes the quality of the film, as it reduces the moral dilemma to black and white, good and evil, with the military representing the one-dimensional superficiality of the latter.  This is never a good sign, and might have worked during the surprisingly benign era of Spielberg, where life always seemed to recall the innocence of the Eisenhower era of the 50’s, but in the present day they are too easy a target, with the film placing a bulls-eye on their back, making them the bad guys, including rudely ordering people around, refusing to listen to any other views, and basically being hard-asses.  In an event this extraordinary, requiring as many variant points of view as possible, one would think we could rise to more sophisticated levels than this, where perhaps NASA and their people might be involved, as after all, they have actual experience in space exploration.  While this element doesn’t ruin the film, but it certainly dampens one’s enthusiasm overall, as this amazing discovery and consequent burst of scientific curiosity has the possibility at least of providing so much more elevated material, where the military aspect simply bogs down the exploration of ideas.  Banks, who has flashbacks of her own daughter throughout, as if having visions, suggests the aliens may be able to communicate with her even after she leaves the vessel, or is perhaps suffering unanticipated side-effects, yet it’s all part of the turmoil of the times, where China is on the verge of attack and the military is ending all communications, evacuating the premises, and pulling back from the alien ship.  At that moment, when our future as a planet is at risk, Banks has a breakthrough, discovering “Time isn’t linear to them!”  With that, she understands that her flashbacks are actually flash-forwards, as she’s seeing the future, something only possible through the use of the alien language.  This reassembled concept of how we view time has a beautifully composed final montage filled with miraculous accomplishments and poetic ruminations, where we’re literally able to see inside the soul of Louise Banks, who becomes strangely heroic and vulnerable in the process, becoming an extremely compelling character, something not often associated with scientists in film, but Amy Adams offers the performance of her career, projecting a highly motivated figure who is bold, warmhearted, and resilient, committed to her responsibilities, exuding a maternal sweetness that contrasts with those around her, becoming a moving sci-fi film that explores the future yet searches just as deeply within the hearts of our own humanity.