Distinguished Flying Cross

A father sitting centre table, flanked by his two grown-up sons, and beers: this minimal construction is as geometrically sober as Leonardo de Vinci’s Last Supper. Relaxed, the man unrestrainedly recounts his experience as an air force officer in Vietnam. War? His vocation as a pilot was the fruit of chance: you had to go through the air force to get a career in aviation. Fighter helicopter? He had no desire to fly one, weapons meant little to him. Questioning the margin of manoeuvre of what the filmmaker calls “a good man” in times of unjust war, the film above all focuses on the distinctive features of his discourse. A lengthy subtitle sets the autobiographical material at a distance in the manner of the chapter titles of an 18th-century novel: The Story of How Chief Warrant Officer Wilkerson Was Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross As Conveyed To His Sons. Emphasis is placed on narration as an artefact (how is the exploit that nearly cost his father his life related?) and on the context of speech (partial, almost silent listeners). Distinguished Flying Cross, unostentatiously Brechtian, dispenses with commentary. It leaves us alone with an “embedded” story and surprising archive colour images filmed by the GIs themselves, who are in fact the only storytellers.

Charlotte Garson