‘Flags of Our Fathers’

Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of the cost of war is told through voice-over and flashbacks, immersing viewers in the thick of combat.

By: Bob Brown
   This anguished portrait of war’s aftershocks is not the heroic hagiography one might assume from its trailers. In fact, this movie demystifies heroism. Heroes are created by others when they are most needed, and forgotten when they are not.
   Clint Eastwood, who directed and scored the film, is no sentimentalist, even though the picture is an emotional powerhouse. The source is James Bradley’s sobering book of the same title, based on his father John’s memorabilia from the Battle of Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest of World War II.
   James Bradley’s father never spoke about the war to his family. The son only knew that his dad was in a famous photograph of a flag-raising, and that every Memorial Day, the press would call John Bradley for a comment. The family was always instructed to say he was "fishing in Canada."
   After his father died, James discovered a box of artifacts from his father’s service: press clippings, journals, letters, enough information for James to reconstruct John’s experience and revisit those who had served with him and remembered the truth.
   What bound them together was that flag-raising photo. It was the famous one by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who had snapped it quickly on a Speed Graphlex. This is a bulky view camera with individually mounted backs for 4-by-5-inch sheet film. Traveling with American forces to Iwo Jima, Rosenthal heard there was to be a flag raising on Mount Suribachi five days after the Americans’ initial assault.
   The ascent to this strategic high ground had cost the Marines dearly. The Japanese had been tunneling into the rock for months, placing hundreds of troops underground and in pillboxes, manning heavy artillery and machine guns.
   Like Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line, this movie immerses viewers in the thick of combat. Soldiers watch their buddies being mown down like hay. A platoon leader, urging his men on, is pulverized by an exploding shell. Body parts fly liberally. Men are shooting and stabbing at close range, doing horrible things just to keep from being killed themselves.
   The bravest die. The survivors have already hoisted a small Stars and Stripes by the time Rosenthal arrives. As they are replacing it with a larger flag, he grabs a quick shot at a shutter speed of 1/400. He is not even sure if it came out. His lucky shot of the second flag raising is circulating on wire services two days later, and the image stirs a wave of patriotism.
   It’s a great iconic image. The strong, triangular composition of the soldiers against a clouded sky is stark and easily understood. It is strangely like Emmanuel Leutze’s "Washington Crossing the Delaware," furled flag and all, but stripped down to its essentials. Furthermore, the solders’ faces are not visible. They could be anyone — your son, your neighbor, your fiancé.
   Because the photo galvanized public support for the war, the flag raisers are pulled from duty stations and trotted out on display at Buy War Bonds rallies, leaving their buddies, dead and alive, back on the front.
   They aren’t heroes in their own minds, though. The horrors of war and the survivor guilt haunts them, especially Ira "Chief" Hayes (Adam Beach), a Native American, who hits the bottle hard. John "Doc" Bradley, a battlefield medic (Ryan Phillippe), tries to hold Chief together, but it’s hopeless. Their third companion, Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), basks in the glory much to the Chief’s disgust. But all feel they did nothing special — they fought more for their mates than for their flag. Bradley and others wanted to be remembered as regular guys who were willing to die for their friends. These three actors stand out for their performances, especially Beach, who should be nominated for an Academy Award.
   Voice-over and flashbacks tell the story. Iwo Jima scenes are in the washed-out, sepia tones of a distantly remembered nightmare. Battles and War Bonds rallies are alternated, to show the ludicrous pressure the soldiers feel to perform. "The real heroes," Gagnon tells audiences, "are dead."
   Eastwood’s simple theme music is appropriate to this melancholic, reflective mood, rather than grandiose like the scores of a John Williams or James Horner.
   There have always been films on the psychic wounds that linger after soldiers return, notably The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), The Deer Hunter (1978), and recently the documentary The War Tapes. Flags of Our Fathers ranks with the best of them. It’s a poignant story told with respect and deep empathy, realizing that no one except a soldier can truly understand the divide that separates the fighter from those on whose behalf he fights.
Rated R for sequences of graphic war violence and carnage, and for language.