Flag Day starts with an image of a car chase juxtaposed with childhood images and a woman hearing from the police that her father had been printing fake money at scale.
A beautiful start that sets the tone for the rest of the film. Handheld, grainy shots, combined with rough edits and deep characters sunk in their failures and depression. Sean Penn is probably the most direct descendant of John Cassavetes in filmmaking today (and we know that they were friends, and that Cassavetes even wrote She's Delovely - later renamed She's So Lovely and directed by Nick Cassavetes- for him). The style of Flag Day is certainly reminiscent of Cassavetes (if you squint a little). But what would have been a perfectly great film in the 80's, maybe even the 90's, feels dated today, constantly pulled down by a sense of nostalgia that is not necessarily shared by the audience. This keeps the story and characters from ever surfacing and the audience is left wondering more than once when the film will end.
While not always clear, the film is ultimately the story of a man created by a culture and system that won't let him flourish and will seek to destroy him. From that point of view, the film does a much better job than other films such as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing or Hillbilly Elegy at painting the story of the people that felt betrayed by America as it evolved. Also told from the point of view of someone (his daughter, beautifully played by Sean Penn's daughter Dylan Penn) who succeeded in the system, like Hillbilly Elegy was, to show both a balanced picture and the randomness of the system, it has the advantage of taking place in the 90's, taking away the unbearably pedagogical angle from other films around "here's why people voted for Trump".
Flag Day is based on a true story, and one can only wish Sean Penn had had the courage to free himself from that label, to let the film venture into more free and more poetic paths. It is when it allows itself that freedom, such as the scenes that take place on Flag Day, that it's at its best.
A beautiful start that sets the tone for the rest of the film. Handheld, grainy shots, combined with rough edits and deep characters sunk in their failures and depression. Sean Penn is probably the most direct descendant of John Cassavetes in filmmaking today (and we know that they were friends, and that Cassavetes even wrote She's Delovely - later renamed She's So Lovely and directed by Nick Cassavetes- for him). The style of Flag Day is certainly reminiscent of Cassavetes (if you squint a little). But what would have been a perfectly great film in the 80's, maybe even the 90's, feels dated today, constantly pulled down by a sense of nostalgia that is not necessarily shared by the audience. This keeps the story and characters from ever surfacing and the audience is left wondering more than once when the film will end.
While not always clear, the film is ultimately the story of a man created by a culture and system that won't let him flourish and will seek to destroy him. From that point of view, the film does a much better job than other films such as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing or Hillbilly Elegy at painting the story of the people that felt betrayed by America as it evolved. Also told from the point of view of someone (his daughter, beautifully played by Sean Penn's daughter Dylan Penn) who succeeded in the system, like Hillbilly Elegy was, to show both a balanced picture and the randomness of the system, it has the advantage of taking place in the 90's, taking away the unbearably pedagogical angle from other films around "here's why people voted for Trump".
Flag Day is based on a true story, and one can only wish Sean Penn had had the courage to free himself from that label, to let the film venture into more free and more poetic paths. It is when it allows itself that freedom, such as the scenes that take place on Flag Day, that it's at its best.