Friday, February 09, 2007
Flags of our Fathers
Not since Saving Private Ryan has war been portrayed so graphically onscreen. Even on my 32-inch wide-screen LCD TV this movie is devastatingly gruesome; on the big screen it must be enough to make one lose one’s pop corn. It is about people being used. Three combat soldiers plucked off the line for a PR Junket in America. A picture of six soldiers raising an impromptu flag over Iwo Jima caught the nation’s attention and suddenly their presence to bolster the War Bond drive is critical to the national war effort. That they posed for a re-enactment of the original flag raising and that half their number are already dead was of no importance. The fund drive trumped all and these three were asked to act the part of National Heroes whether or not they felt they deserved that recognition. This movie is about what that cost them.
In the first place surgery that Doc required was postponed so that his recovery would not interfere with the National Tour. No effort is made to give them counseling to deal with the trauma they so recently experienced or time to grieve for the loss of so many buddies. Nor does much effort appear to be made to help them deal with the press or make public speeches. They are thrown to the wolves in venues where alcohol flows like a river and everyone wants to stand them a drink like a groom at a stag party. For men of low rank and humble backgrounds to be suddenly whisked to the White House to meet the president and be fawned over by men of power and high society alike must have been intimidating in the extreme. The nightmarish experience of war and post-traumatic stress syndrome are one thing; but these men were asked to re-enact those experiences over and over and over again. Hero or not, Ira Hayes discovers that there are still bars where Indians are not welcome. All this leads to inevitable results and in Ira Hayes case, an early death.
The movie on DVD comes with no extras, not even cast and crew files. It does sport the requisite previews for future attractions though. The Dreamworks music and proprietary symbols are at stark odds with the material that follows. The jump shots from venue to venue, in the war zone and in America; and the switches in time and place, make one uncomfortable and often confused. If this was the desired affect it succeeded in spades.
To see that film footage shot on Mount Suribachi go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Little Boy Blue
If the Waltons serve as ideal role models the West's, in Little Boy Blue are about as dysfunctional as one could get. Deprived of his manhood as a result of a Viet Nam injury Ray has forced his son Jimmy to have incestuous relations with his wife Kate at gunpoint since the boy reached puberty. The resulting male progeny were cast to look remarkably like their father played by Ryan Phillippe.
If there is any sense of normalcy about this drama it is in the relationship between these two little boys and their brother/father Jimmy. Amid all the convoluted inter-weavings of the plot line we are drawn to the Hamlet like character played by the achingly handsome Phillippe.
Having finally tracked down a copy of this movie after 10 years; watching it again was like seeing it anew. The movie ends in Shakespearian like cross-piled bodies and we are left in doubt as to whether Jimmy has met a similar fate until the final scene.
The Waltons
The problem with current TV families in my un-humble estimation is the lack of positive role models. No one would call Roseanne, Al Bundy or Homer Simpson ideal parents. With the divorce rate exceeding 50% and growing; family life on television appears to be equally dysfunctional.
By contrast Earl Hamner Jr.'s memories of his childhood in the depression era Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia are a sentimental trip down memory lane of a childhood so idyllic and bucolic as to stretch belief. Certainly, when these episodes first aired in the seventies they didn't get much air time on the TV's in my residence dorm at University or in most cities; but they held such appeal to rural Middle-America that they actually put several competing programmes off the air in their time slot on Thursday nights and continued for 10 seasons.
To describe in this venue the elements that made up a typical episode is to make this show sound hokey beyond belief. The muted trumpet tune and historic shots fading to a view of Walton's Mountain and Earl Hamner's folksy narration. The moralistic plot lines ending always in a view of the old clapboard house with a veranda out front and a light in John-Boy's window as the family call their good night wishes back and forth.
Grandma Walton puts me in mind of Granny Yokum in Dogpatch, but without the double-whammy. Her husband Zebulon adds character to the piece while their daughter-in-law serves as the straight-laced, god-fearing Baptist moral fibre of the clan married to a sawyer who refuses steadfastly to attend church even while he serves as the clan's anchor. It is his hunting buddy Yancy Tucker who reminds us, along with the backwood cousins in a later episode that this is the land of the feuding inbred Clantons and McCoys.
Since I missed most of these episodes the first time round it is pleasant to see them on DVD even if 70's TV was not up to modern standards—at least now I can see them in colour. Season 4 was just released and there are thus six more seasons to come.
