Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here. Whenever a film is released that seems so obviously aimed at winning awards, my defenses rise up and my cynicism kicks into overdrive. But the simple fact remains that some "event" films are actually good enough to deserve every last accolade they will inevitably generate.
The undeniable fact remains that Clint Eastwood is one of our greatest living filmmakers, and never has he been so clearly angling for awards as he is with Flags of Our Fathers. Does that mean the movie is not good? Absolutely not. The story behind the six men who raised the flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima, which resulted in the single most famous wartime image in history, is beyond fascinating. Eastwood has gone the extra step to tell this story right by hiring two-time Oscar winner Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) to co-write the screenplay (with William Broyles Jr.), and the results are largely phenomenal and endlessly fascinating, especially to those who know nothing about the true facts behind this legendary flag event.
The battle scenes--and there are many of them--are some of the bloodiest a studio film has ever released, and I applaud Eastwood and Co. for giving an unflinching look at how dirty, gory, and borderline unmentionable this part of WWII really was. But fighting isn’t what this movie is about. Flags of Our Fathers is about manufacturing heroes during wartime. There is absolutely no doubt that the men in the flag-raising photo are heroes (three of them died on that same battlefield), but as the truth is revealed to us about the circumstances of that event, one can’t help but be reminded of the military repeatedly inventing or exaggerating events during wartime to generate support for causes and wars that may not have been popular at the time. For those who don’t know the details, I’ll let the movie tell the facts. Part of the entertainment value of the film is learned piece by piece the truth. But the rest of the film follows the three surviving soldiers in the photo as they are sent across the country to drum up support for the war and drive war bond sales.
The events these three men attend are often embarrassing and troubling to them, as they are faced time after time with the image of them with that flag. What troubles them the most is that one of the men who died was misidentified in the original photograph, and the family of the real sixth man don’t find out for many years that it was their son in the photo. But more than that, the three men feel more like mascots than soldiers.
An entire film could be made about the life of Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), the Native American Marine who was one of the bravest fighters at Iwo Jima (actually a film was made, called The Outsider with Tony Curtis). “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” is one of the greatest songs ever written, and was immortalized by the likes of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Few life stories sum up the problems in America better that Hayes’, and Beach carries the weight like few actors could. But because the film’s source material is a book written by the son of the one of the men in the photo--John Bradley (Ryan Phillippe, giving by far the best performance of his career)--much of the film focuses on him. Eastwood’s only major misstep with this movie is framing the story as a series of flashbacks as told to Bradley’s son as he’s collecting details for his book. Watching an actor playing author James Bradley interviewing actors playing people who had information on these events adds nothing to the inherent drama of this story.
The war bonds activities culminates in a humiliating event at Chicago’s Soldier’s Field, at which the three men much climb a paper maché mountain peak and plant a flag for the benefit of thousands of onlookers. Hayes is drunk off his ass, as he was often at the time; the guilt and horror of his experience was simply too much for him. The third man, Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), seems the most eager to please. The film almost implies he’s overcompensating since he didn’t do much actual fighting at Iwo Jima since he was a message runner.
The thing that Eastwood does best with Flags of Our Fathers is turn these iconic figures into real human beings eager to give credit where credit is due, and always ready to point out that the real heroes died on that battlefield. I’ll admit, the film didn’t stir up any heavy emotions in me, but it works as a storytelling exercise about an event that some may not want to know the truth about. What the film did generate within me is an extra level of enthusiasm to see Eastwood February 2007 follow-up, Letter from Iwo Jima, a look at the battle from the Japanese perspective. The fact that Eastwood is even making the film speaks volumes about just what a ballsy filmmaker the guy is, and it goes right to the heart of the point of what he is such a legend. Flags of Our Fathers is not his best work, but that doesn’t stop it from being endlessly fascinating, brilliantly acted, and breathtakingly realized.
Capone
