VOD Review: How to Fold a Flag
The Iraq war documentary How to Fold a Flag opens with an intriguing quote from German writer and military veteran Ernst Jünger: "We were asked to believe that the war was over. We laughed. For we were the war."
This quote is wholly appropriate for the SXSW 2010 film, which has just become available on cable VOD and online, including Amazon Instant Video
Directors Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker follow up on five soldiers featured in their acclaimed 2004 documentary Gunner Palace. How to Fold a Flag updates us on the civilian lives of four soldiers, while also interviewing the parents of a fifth soldier killed in Iraq. Like its predecessor, the film is an unblinking and often caustic look at the Iraq war's toll.
The veterans profiled in How to Fold a Flag are a disparate group; if not for serving together in Iraq, they would have almost nothing in common. Their views on the war and military vary widely, as they enlisted for very different reasons and, not surprisingly, have had strikingly different post-combat experiences.
Veteran Javorn Drummond grew up poor and had few career options, so he enlisted at 17. He hated all things Army and is no happier about his experiences after returning home. He lives in squalor in Fayetteville, North Carolina, works in a hog processing plant and hopes to complete a GI Bill-funded degree in criminal justice.
In stark contrast to Drummond, Jon Powers grew up in solidly middle-class suburban Buffalo. His ROTC leadership skills landed him the thankless jobs of writing operating procedures for handling the dead and sending home their personal effects. After returning to Buffalo, he became a substitute teacher and founded a nonprofit organization to help Iraqi youth. How to Fold a Flag follows his campaign for Congress as a 29-year-old Democrat.
Texan Michael Goss survived a brutal experience that would haunt any soldier. While manning a traffic checkpoint in Baghdad, Goss and his squad fired on a car that failed to stop, killing several children including 8-year-old Mirvet Kawaz. Seeing her body so haunted Goss that he became suicidal. He later was dishonorably discharged for creating a video featuring footage of a beheading he found online. Out of the military but still looking for a fight, Goss made an unusual career choice: cage fighting.
If Drummond and Goss are merely bitter, Stuart Wilf is bitterly funny. At 17, his father gave him the choice of joining the Army or going to jail after trashing a house his real-estate agent mother had placed on the market. During his tour, he became an unlikely celebrity as a Time magazine centerfold, posing in his underwear while playing electric guitar in his bunker. Wilf now says relatively little about the war, passing the time by working in a convenience store and playing in a death metal band. He insists he's left the war behind him. But his mother, Becky, cannot; Stuart's younger brother has joined the army and soon will be in Afghanistan.
Ben Colgan's enlistment surprised his peace activist parents, but they nonetheless are proud of him for his service as a member of the Army's elite Delta Force. Sadly, Colgan did not survive his tour. The interviews with his parents are among the film's most poignant moments.
The stories in How to Fold a Flag unfold during the 2008 election, the perfect backdrop for the film's unapologetically cynical and slightly surreal take on modern American wars. The movie is entirely sympathetic toward the people who fight them, but far less so toward the ill-informed patriotism that ignores the real truth about why we fight. As we see congressional candidate Jon Powers pressing the flesh at a Memorial Day parade, we don't really fault him for exploiting his military career to curry favor with voters; after all, he seems sincere about wanting to help his struggling rust-belt community. But as the flags wave and the bands play tired renditions of patriotic marches, we do wonder if the proud American voters he's courting -- most of whom have no immediate connection to the Iraq conflict -- really understand the ghastly realities of war.
The same is true for scenes of Powers' comrades. Fans of cage fighter Michael Goss herald him as a war hero. But as a teenage girl sings a flat and thin "Star Spangled Banner" before Goss's match, is anyone in the crowd aware that the Army put Goss on four different psychiatric medications and later arrested him, thinking he'd beheaded someone? And as Stuart Wilf and his mother watch the charismatic Barack Obama with rapt attention at a campaign rally, does the crowd really think Obama will change America's profit-fueled military machine?
I could go on, but you get the idea. How to Fold a Flag is the just the latest in a series of inherently grim documentaries about Iraq and Afghanistan, and tells us little we don't already know. But like the best of its ilk, it presents its subjects' lives with great, grimy intimacy, demanding that we pay attention to their stories and reminding us that Uncle Sam has done them few favors since they left the military. It also has a refreshingly fearless sense of irony, making point after cynical point by juxtaposing patriotic clichés with harsh doses of truth.
Released by Virgil Films (which also released Restrepo) under the Morgan Spurlock Presents label, How to Fold a Flag obviously is a message film, created as a plea to help veterans struggling to readjust to civilian life. But beyond its activist raison d'être, it's fine documentary filmmaking. The editing is brisk and seamless, and the digital cinematography is sharp, with many memorable images. (I found the freeze-frame effects a bit odd, but they did lock the images in my memory.) The film also has a good balance of talking heads and action.
How to Fold a Flag may not break new documentary ground, but it's a well crafted and moving portrait of veterans' fates. And it's very appropriate viewing for Memorial Day weekend, for it honors its subjects while -- in the greatest American tradition -- questioning why our nation continues to fight wars.
How to Fold a Flag is available on cable VOD providers and well as online at Netflix, iNDemand, TVM, Hulu, iTunes, VUDU, CinemaNow and Amazon Instant Video