Word: fates
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...hear as excellent and pithy a summation of a man as I did on the day of my grandfather’s funeral. Several of his children, grandchildren, and the parish priest had already spoken, offering sincere yet unremarkable praise of his conduct in this world and his fate in the next. The final speaker was a friend of my grandfather’s who had also served in the pacific theater during the Second World War. The marine made his way up to the platform slowly. Everything about him suggested that it would not be very long until...
Yamashita's script is much more relentlessly cruel. In essence, the Japanese officers compelled the bravery (and suicide) of their troops at gunpoint. Only the Japanese commander, Lieut. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (a mysterious historical figure who fascinates Eastwood), and a fictional conscript, Saigo, whose fate Yamashita intertwines with his commanding officer's, demonstrate anything like humanity as a Westerner might understand it. The lieutenant general, educated in part in the U.S., is respectful of its national spirit (and industrial might) and believes that a live soldier, capable of carrying on the fight, is infinitely more valuable than a dead...
...bond tour (they were obliged to re-enact the flag raising on a papier-mâché Suribachi at Soldier Field in Chicago) and then traces their postwar descent into dream-tossed anonymity. You could argue that the Japanese were the lucky ones: their government and religion foreordained their fate, and they had no choice but to endure it. Chance played more capriciously with the Americans, who liked to think they were in charge of their destinies. Yet Flag's protagonists end up knowing that they were blessed by nothing more than a photo op--and knowing that the true, unacknowledged...
...inscrutability of fate has always been a major Eastwoodian subtext. But now, as he approaches his 76th birthday, he has begun to take it personally. "There are so many people who are as good or better than me who aren't working," he says of his career, "while I still am. I can't explain that, but luck has to play a part." Here's hoping his luck holds...
...ironic twist of fate, both the Crimson (5-3, 3-2 Ivy) and the Quakers (5-3, 3-2 Ivy) are all but assuredly on the outside looking in for the 2005 league championship...