"Flags of Our Fathers"

Clint Eastwood's latest movie will not do much for military recruitment I imagine, but it tells a engrossing behind-the-scenes story of the propaganda fallout from a photograph of the raising of the American flag over Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima, one of the culminating battles against the forces of the Japanese Empire.  Those going to it expecting "The Sands of Iwo Jima" (dir. Alan Dwan,  1949) or a straight-forward anti-war film like Hal Ashby's "Coming Home" (1978) will be disappointed.  This is not a "thumb-sucker" philosopical cinematic treatise into the madness or gallantry of war, but a focused investigation into why some warriors who survive mankind's greatest folly get made into heroes--even when they themselves insist they aren't--and why grown people need to still believe in heroes and make these myths that we prefer so much more than the raw truth.

Paging anyone who remembers the Jessica Lynch story in 2003 over in Iraq: there's nothing new under the sun.   In this, the great "good war" of the 20th Century,  there are  echoes of our current imbroglio in Mesopotemia.  There is a war that has to be fought (and finished) and the government has to sell it to John and Jane Q public to raise money and to do that you need heroes.  So three marines are paraded around like prize heifers to sell War Bonds.   What happens to the men during the battle and how far the myth of the hero falls from the reality of their lives stateside is the essence of the film.

 

Like John Ford in "Fort Apache" (1948) and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962), you see how myths get shaped and how the legend becomes the fact--at least for the time being.  

 

There is a lot of violence in the scenes on Iwo, as there should be, but Eastwood doesn't try to rub the war into our faces the way Steven Spielberg did in "Private Ryan".  It's a more mature film in that sense.  You can try to replicate mass slaughter with moving images, but is that really possible? I've never been on a battlefield that was less than 125 years old, but I think not.  (Mr Spielberg co-produced this effort.)

The performances  are all exceptional and there is no scene-chewing.

I've heard Mr Eastwood is working   on a film called "Letters From Iwo Jima" that will show the battle from the Japanese perspective.  I'm anxious to see that.