"Humankind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality"

Rating: Null/10 (14 February 2018)

In the bonus track of the DVD of "Last Flag Flying," the film's executive producer Thomas Lee Wright described the theme of "the internal consequences of war" that the film artists sought to evoke. The film was successful in realizing that goal through three extraordinary character portraits.
The most engaging part of the film was the banter among three characters, each of whom was meticulously developed by screenwriter-director Richard Linklater. Sal (Bryan Cranston), a wisecracking owner of a bar; Mueller (Laurence Fishburne), a reformed alcoholic turned pastor; and "Doc" (Steve Carell) had such contrasting characters that film was constantly buoyed by friendly antagonism and one-upsmanship.
The three characters, all of whom are Vietnam vets, meet in the year 2003, a time when the Iraq war is well under way. The film is a no-holds-barred critique of the two wars, which had an eerie resemblance to each other in the enormous investment of money cost in lives in faraway conflicts. Neither the Vietnam nor Iraqi wars were defensive in nature, but each one was started by America and evolved into a brutal quagmire. The strongest line in the film is when Sal berates a Marine colonel, telling him bluntly that if they had worked together in Vietnam, the result would have been "fragging." The word fragging means mutiny in which American soldiers refused to carry out orders and killed their commanding officers in Vietnam.
The antiwar message is strengthened with a complementary philosophical perspective that is best expressed in the poet T. S. Eliot's famous line, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." When the three veterans pay a visit to the mother of a Marine who died because of their horseplay, they plan to atone in a confessional to the mother. But they cannot bring themselves to tell the truth, instead choosing to lie to Mrs. Hightower in order to leave her and themselves with the sense that her son was a hero.
The moving funeral of "Doc's" son, who died senselessly in Iraq offers an exclamation point to the film's critique of the war and the prevarication of the government, when "Doc" was mistakenly led to believe by the feckless colonel that the young man died in combat, when, in fact, he was the victim of an act of terrorism.
The motto "Semper fi" (always faithful) is a reference point for the ideal of dying for one's country that the film portrays as hollow and tragic for such needless wars as the ones in Vietnam and Iraq. This was a memorable and provocative film that raises many ethical questions about our nation's foreign policy both past and present. Great work from Fisburne, Carell, and Cranston!