Old Glory
Rod Lurie's latest film, The Last Castle,
depicts a straightforward struggle between good and
evil, adequately summed up by its tagline: "No castle
can have two kings." In this case, castles and kings
refer not only to territory and authority, but also to
the ancient aspect of the battle. So, we know where
this is going and how it will all turn out: good will
conquer evil; the righteous king will defeat the
unworthy one; and the castle will stand and be
reclaimed.
None of this is particularly new or
thought-provoking; after all, the story is, well,
ancient. What makes The Last Castle worth
talking about is something the filmmakers could never
have foreseen and had little control over: the
alarming timeliness of its release. In the aftermath
of the events of September 11th, U.S. audiences
especially are ready for such overt depictions of the
good/evil dichotomy, and in fact, that's how President
Bush has defined the current war on terrorism: at its
most basic level, a fight between good and evil.
The Last Castle will likely do very well at the
box office, not because it is particulary good, but
becuase, simply put, timing is everything.
Colonel Winter (James Gandolfini) is the sadistic,
meticulous warden of a military prison nicknamed "the
Castle." His newest inmate is 3-star general Eugene
Irwin (Robert Redford), a military hero by all
accounts, whom we are meant to think is unjustly
imprisoned: "They should be naming a base after him,
not sending him here," complains Winter. The warden
fawns over Irwin upon his arrival, even asking for his
autograph, but quickly turns on him when he overhears
Irwin insulting his collection of military relics:
"Any man with a collection like this is a man who has
never set foot on a battlefield." With that, Winter is
on a mission to make sure that Irwin understands who
holds rank inside the Castle.
It turns out Winter runs his ship-shape prison
through manipulating, bullying, and even occasionally
murdering the helpless inmates. But it isn't long
after General Irwin enters genpop, that he discovers
that these criminals are basically good soldiers who
wound up where they are because of some lapse of
self-control, momentary or otherwise. They enlighten
him on Winter's evil-doings and soon Irwin, the great
American hero, has organized the prisoners and whipped
them back into soldiers. Then he decides to take over
the prison in order to overthrow the evil warden (but
only after he politely asks him to resign). It's an
elaborate game of capture the flag, complete with
MacGuyver-like improvised weaponry, that offers plenty
of explosions and brings many a cheer from the
audience.
So, back to the interesting part: The timing of the
film's release. One can't help but wonder if any bits
were added to the film post-September 11. For
instance, there's the American flag is practically a
character unto itself, taking on a Holy Grail kind of
quality by the end of the film. This reverence is
established right from the start. The Last
Castle opens with a voice-over by Irwin (which is
then repeated three times thoroughout the film),
delineating the elements that make a castle a castle:
location, protection, garrison, and apparently most
important, flag.
This point is pounded home relentlessly: the first
time we see Winter, we look up at him through a
window, as he looks out over the prison yard, the
reflection of a billowing American flag superimposed
over his face. And the final part of Irwin's battle
plan is to steal the American flag out of Winter's
office and fly it upside down, as a distress signal.
Of course, such imagery is meant to inspire
patriotism, and it's hard not to respond to it in a
kind of pre-programmed way especially now, when every
Wal-mart in the country is sold out of American flags.
But if you respond solely to the onslaught of overtly
loaded flag-images, you miss the film's argument,
which is problematic, if not downright flawed. When
Colonel Winter discovers that his flag has been taken,
he demands that Irwin "Give me back my flag!" "It's
not your flag," Irwin cooly responds. Whose flag is
it? At film's end, Yates (Mark Ruffalo), a redeemed
prisoner, states in voice-over, "That's my flag.
Nobody takes my flag."
And so, on one level, the argument is obvious and
simple: Winter is "the Evil One" in the film, and of
course, the Evil One cannot have the flag, our symbol
of liberty and goodness and freedom. But here's the
twist: Winter is an American. Why isn't it also his
flag? He's not a particularly nice American, granted;
he's even a criminal when all is said and done. Why is
it okay for the inmates to claim the flag, when they
are in prison for murder, drug-running,
insubordination, and the like, and not Winter? Things
get even messier when you consider that the film codes
Winter as gay and pits him against ranks of
hyper-masculine soldiers. Aligning a straight/gay
dichotomy against a good/evil one is disturbing
enough, but complicating it with American-ness and
inclusion/exclusion of rights to the flag is downright
scary.
Winter, for all his villainy, does have some sense of
how this all works (though Irwin is the character who
will put such knowledge to effective use). Near the
beginning of The Last Castle, he's again gazing
out his window, watching the inmates play ball. Out of
boredom, he orders one of his lackeys to put only one
basketball out in the prison yard the following day.
Predicatably, a fight breaks out; even more
predictably, the fight sets Hispanics against blacks.
Observing the melee, Winter poses the rhetorical
question, "You see how easy it is to manipulate men?"
Such is the danger of buying in to The Last
Castle's very particular version of patriotism and
especially, what it invests (or more importantly, what
it divests) in the American flag. Especially now.
