Cranston also shared an anecdote from his youth to explain how he learned it’s ok to laugh in sad times. “I remember when I was thirteen years old, my grandfather died, and it was the first person I knew [who died] whom I had really loved, and at the wake, there were pockets of people who were laughing, telling jokes. And I was furious. I was absolutely out of mind with anger, because I felt, immaturely at the time, that this is so disrespectful. They couldn’t have loved him because they were laughing! But what we now know, of course, is that people grieve in different ways.” He added that a certain scene in the film illustrates this. “I think one of the best moments in the film, is on the train, when Doc, who is just so crushed with so much depression and pain. When he found a way to laugh naturally, it’s heartbreaking, and Steve did it in such a natural way”.
As a final thought, Linklater added that laughter can be “so healing”.
On the complicated emotions of military service
“Last Flag Flying” is a movie without any easy answers. Even while vocally questioning the necessity of the wars in both Vietnam and Iraq, it acknowledges how important military service is to their identity, with even the rebellious Sal admitting, “It’s the only culture that ever made much sense to me”. The film also questions the consequence of truth in this context. The men are angered by government lies but later see their utility when they visit an elderly woman (Cicely Tyson), whose son they witnessed die. They enter her house determined to unburden themselves of the painful truth of how he died, but eventually demur when they’re confronted with cost of the truth.
“I think the film is really a contemplation of truth, honesty”, Linklater said. “Sal’s carrying something about that, but what does that mean? Are countries honest with their people? Is the mission forthright with what the real mission is to the soldier? It’s a real complex area and with personal truth, it is a really blunt instrument.”
Linklater continued, “It’s no one thing I can distill down into something too simple. It’s a lot of emotions and a lot of mixed feelings, to say the least. I think a lot of people who serve in our military can be very patriotic, love their country, believe deeply that they’re fighting for freedom, democracy, justice and you can still come out of that experience with a pretty intense love/hate relation with it all. Like anyone in any institution, long term you’re all-in, but with a big institution with a lot of bureaucracy, you’re going to be screwed over in that institution to varying degrees and I think we’ve experience that through these characters.”
When Linklater asked the difficult question of what makes a good soldier, Ponicsan had a graceful response. “A good soldier is a warrior who’s willing to give up his life but not his soul. That’s the way I think of these guys. You know when you’ve done something wrong, and you know it’s going to hang on you and at some point you’re going to have a reckoning. You’re going to have to pay a price and I think that’s one of the interesting dynamics of these three guys getting together, because some of the things that you are ordered to do, asked to do, or the things you do on your own when you’re on the field are things that shouldn’t have been done. That’s the dilemma of the good soldier, is where do you put your conscience and your sense of what’s right?”
On the film’s connection to the politics of today
In general, the group was uninterested in tying their film to current political debates. Asked if the film was connected to the debate Trump has blown up around the flag at NFL games, Fishbourne was adamant, “We’re not fitting into that. We got nothing to do with that.” Linklater added, “I think we’re so far from the ridiculousness of that conversation.”
Linklater admitted “There’s always an echo of the political right now”, but generally rejected a contemporary reading. “We’re set in ’03, long before the politics of today, so that kind of frees you up politically. I always felt that, politics aside, our job was just to reflect these guys’ politics, what they think, and it’s a little ambiguous. They’re all very different people.”
Despite this, the group mused on whom the characters might have voted for, concluding that Mueller definitely would not have voted Trump, but that “crazy Sal” might have, “just to throw a little F U into the world”.
“Last Flag Flying” is now playing at the New York Film Festival and will open theatrically on November 3rd.
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