Half Mast

[thedrifter]

HALF MAST
hg.editorial@archant.co.uk
23 December 2006

Flags Of Our Fathers (15)

CLINT Eastwood has come up with a novel idea to keep cinema-goers hooked.

Make a film about the Second World War and then present it from both sides - the American version of events coming out first and the Japanese point of view following a few months later.

The central premise of Flags of Our Fathers is based on the true story behind possibly the most reproduced photography in living history - that of the raising of an American flag by some marines during a battle on the tiny Japanese island of Iwo Jima.

This seemingly inconsequential act catapults the servicemen to fame in their home country, where the picture makes every front page and succeeds in revitalising what had - up until then - been a flagging war effort.

As the surviving marines are brought back to embark on a tour to encourage Americans to snap up war bonds, their experiences are interspaced with bloody memories of the battle they left behind.

Like Saving Private Ryan, this spares the audience little, bombarding them with shots of dismembered limbs, heads even, and guts spilling out of bodies.

Is this what it means to share anti-war sentiments? The refusal to shy away from its horrific consequences?

It's hard to tell as the unrelenting violence and the film's unwillingness to let any opportunity go by to show it seems almost gratuitous.

Character development is sacrificed to action sequences and scant attention is paid to exploring the marines' backgrounds, or how their lives are affected by their sudden rise to fame, except in the case of Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), a Native American, who turns to drink.

Still, even though Flag Of Our Fathers doesn't quite come up to scratch, Eastwood has at least guaranteed an audience for his next film.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Symbolic victory for Clint

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (15) DIRECTOR: CLINT EASTWOOD UNTIL now, the war films with which Clint Eastwood has been involved have drawn on the broader appeal of the taciturn icon, rather than that of the serious film-maker. Where Eagles Dare was an enjoyable escapade with EastwoodandRichardBurtonsingle-handedly taking on a Nazi stronghold; Kelly's Heroes was a poor man's Dirty Dozen; Heartbreak Ridge (which he also directed), was straight out of the "gung-ho old-timer growls at rookies" school of wartime twit-flick.

Flags Of Our Fathers is a different animalaltogether.Ifnotexactlya pacifist film, it is certainly one that puts war in a proper perspective: as a terrible expediency, experienced on the whole by young men, the rhetoric of which is at best misguided, at worst disingenuous and dangerous. It is sombre, mature, pensive, its tone not unlike that of Eastwood's last two, Oscar-ladenoutings,MillionDollar Baby and Mystic River. But where those two dived headlong into melodrama, this one - based as it is on real events - ably holds its course.

The rhetoric explored by the film is central to wartime myth-making: that of the "hero". And during the second world war in the Pacific there were none more heroic - if one marks heroism by medals of honour - than the US soldiers who fought at Iwo Jima.

The Japanese island stronghold was taken by US troops in early 1945 after 35 days of intense fighting and thousands of deaths and casualties. A key strategic target, Iwo Jima developed evengreatersignificanceasamorale booster for the war effort after the publication of a single photograph: the indelible image of six men raising the US flag on the top of the island's Mount Suribachi. Early on, the occasional narrator tells us that in wartime people need "an easy-to-understand truth, and damn few words" if they are tokeepthefaith;oneofthemost famous war photographs ever taken symbolised that.

Flags of Our Fathers concerns itself with three of the six "flag-raisers". After surviving Iwo Jima, they were quickly airlifted back home to capitalise on theirnewfoundfame,touringthe country to raise war bonds. Shifting between the present-day investigation of a soldier's son into the wartime story his father never told him, the fundraisingtour-completewithtacky stadium recreation of the raising of the flag - and the battle of Iwo Jima itself, Eastwoodconsidersthevarious meanings of heroism.

The problem for two of the three men, "Doc" Bradley (Ryan Philippe) andNativeAmericanIraHayes (Adam Beach), is that they simply don't see themselves as heroes; don't see the act of putting a flag on a pole during a cessationofhostilitiesasanything close to heroic; and they feel that many of their friends who died in action are more deserving of tribute. WhileDocatleastcanremain detached from the media circus, Ira - who also has to deal with the hypocritical racism of folks back home - is so overcome by guilt and disgust that he hits the bottle.

YoungmessengerReneGagnon (Jesse Bradford), however, is lapping it up, despite never firing his weapon on the battlefield. Rene reveals himself in anearlyscene, when he's outed as having chosen the marines because he liked the uniform. "No sense being ahero,ifyoudon'tlooklikeone," he quips.

As we see the tension develop between these three men on tour, and between Ira with his political handlers, in the flashbacks Eastwood reminds us ofthehorrortheyhaveescaped. Whether an epic staging of the fleet's arrival at the island, the tense initial beach landing, or the many scenes of close combat, the warfare is brilliantly shot, with a desaturated palette and the sort of immediacy - actors seemingly dodging real bullets - borrowed from Saving Private Ryan (whose director, Steven Spielberg, is a producer here.) As in all the best war films, it is the suddenness and arbitrariness of death thatismoststriking,thelattera reminder that heroism is rarely sought; it is merely met.

Eastwood suggests that these men "fought for their country, but they died fortheirfriends".Hisrefreshing absence of jingoism is matched by a portrait of marines not as the usual foul-mouthed, dimwitted grunts, but as they may well have been: too young, too innocent and far too unprepared forwhatwasto befall them.

Flags Of Our Fathers is out now

Ellie