How to Fold a Flag

Filmmakers Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, whose documentary Gunner Palace (VL-7/05) focused on American soldiers from the 2/3 Field Artillery unit in Iraq, follow up with this unnerving look at four returned combat vets from the same group. Javorn Drummond, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, resumes his civilian life in North Carolina, feeling as if he was used in an irrelevant conflict. Sgt. Michael Goss of Texas witnessed a hideous “friendly fire” incident; a cathartic video he made—which he claimed was his cry for help—earned him a dishonorable discharge instead, and now he tries to support his family and memorialize lost comrades in cage-fighting matches. Jon Powers, a civic-minded individual with a seemingly spotless record, runs for office as a Democrat in economically depressed Buffalo, NY, where he is effectively smeared by the wealthy Republican power structure and their stooges in the press. Seeming to step right out of M*A*S*H is Stuart Wilf, a Colorado slacker whose cynicism spares neither right-wing Christian patriots nor fellow veterans who act out their alienation in bizarre street theater. The title refers to a ceremony to honor a dead soldier; indeed there is a fifth “character” in Ben Colgan, a Gunner Palace protagonist killed in 2003 and saluted here in absentia. The message of this sad history lesson is that the nation Colgan would have returned to—with its dead-end jobs and empty sloganeering—would have seemed less than grateful. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)