" Synopsis
While digging holes in the middle of a post-apocalyptic American wasteland, three citizen-soldier cadets– Bernie, Bob, and Betsy– unearth an ancient relic of the mythic ‘Old America’ that promises to save their ailing, militarized state– IF they can keep it safe from harm until the big rally the next day!
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Director’s Statement
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a soldier for good. I remember that on September 11th, 2001, I didn’t feel fear or confusion when I heard about attacks on the country I call home. If anything, I felt excitement– a new enemy, evil and irrationally cruel, had arisen for America and it was time for my country, noble and just, to ride out and bring ’em to justice! And boy was I lucky– I’d be alive to see it all go down!
A lot has happened since then. The world looks very different and the would-be boy soldier has done a bit of growing up. My relation to the sorts of chivalric idealism I once whole-heartedly believed in has had to undergo some necessary revision. The world resists the easy binaries I divided it into, and at this point the globe shows no signs of slowing down its complication– if anything, it’s picking up speed!
Militarism, something that I’d argue that many boys and girls in America are brought up in part to love and admire, is very strongly coupled with nationalism and our national iconography. Most World War II films will have Old Glory waving in a defiant wind at some point in their run time– without it, it would probably feel like something is missing from the experience– but just what this object is made to stand for, what it embodies and what omits from that embodiment, is what lies at the heart of the project of my film Old Glory.
Old Glory is, at its core, a film about a clash between two worlds: the interior world of Quixotic heroism, fantasy, and good-hearted national pride, and the often grim, shameful reality that capitalizes on this idealism or passes itself off as a similar quest for a “world of gold” while creating quite the contrary. The relic of old America means entirely different things to the cadets and the kommandant of the film’s storyline, and the ways in which both groups engage with the object and where it ultimately ends up suggest what is, in my mind, a fitting social allegory for our conflicted times.
The film is a comedy, but there’s plenty of emotional heart at operation beneath the hijinks and madcap atmosphere. The heroes suffer tragedy and triumph, laughter and loss, and the moral question posed at the close after all they’ve seen and done is a valuable, timeless one for audiences of citizens past or present:
What does it mean to be good?