Flags of Our Fathers
does. While nominally a
telling of the bloody fight for
1945, and the events leading up to and following the snapping of the iconic
image on ash-strewn
hoisting an American flag, the film in many ways is a de facto examination of
battle-bred guilt, and state-sanctioned manipulation and exploitation of image.
Jumping indistinctly to and fro in time, it commingles bloody action and more
conjectural passages in a manner that might induce fatigue in more restless
audiences.
what could be construed as a pointed indictment of
current geopolitical morass and those that led its charge, a gruff line of
narration that reads thusly: “Every jackass thinks he knows what war is —
especially those who’ve never been in one.” It soon becomes clear, though, that
Eastwood’s movie is a combat film by only half, and the old “War is hell”
drumbeat isn’t necessarily part of the main narrative agenda.
football stadium introduces us to three soldiers, we flash back to just before
the battle of
Mike Strank (Barry Pepper), we meet John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), a
respected Navy corpsman medic; message runner Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford); and
infantryman Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), a stoic Native American with a propensity
for freezing up in battle. The bloody beachhead siege ensues, along with more
Stateside scenes of several weeks and months later.
of the public knows, Doc, Rene and Ira, of the six total men who raised the
flag on Mount Suribachi (the others were killed a short time later), are called
upon to take part in a war bond barnstorming tour across the
States
Hickey) as their handler, they take to the streets, ballparks, ballrooms and
town halls of
even as they resist being labeled heroes.
visually ennobling, the image is actually a snapshot taken on the fifth day of
what would be a 40-day battle, and of it’s the second flag to be raised, after
the first is taken down at the behest of a general. Of course, none of that
matters to the hard-charging Bud Gerber (John Slattery), who presses Doc, Rene
and Ira to do their civic duty. It’s weathered, incidental mundanity repackaged
as valor, even if the young men are all steadfastly honorable about citing
their peers, fallen and still fighting, as the real heroes.
conditions status most readily, while Doc for the most part keeps quiet. Ira,
though, regards the proceedings as a farce, and quickly and increasingly uses
alcohol as a crutch to get him through events — fundraising dinners where strawberry
sauce is dribbled on molded white chocolate delicacies of the flag-raising —
and the indignity of the casual racism to which he is nearly constantly
subjected.
style and perfunctory set-ups — drains affect or overt emotionalism from most
of the performances. Still, Beach manages to really make an impression as Ira,
as he convincingly conveys the swallowed weight of the torturous conflict he
feels. He’s done and seen things in war of which he’s not proud, but, like Rene
and Doc, is told to put on a public face, if only to honor them. Ira’s the
least suited to do this, and his self-destructiveness — both in the broader
context of his increasing drunkenness and writ more subtly across his pained
face — is compellingly rendered.
co-screenwriters William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis use author James Bradley’s
book as a wraparound device for the movie, inserting scenes of him (played by Tom
McCarthy) interviewing several of his father Doc’s fellow servicemen to learn
more about his exploits and the events surrounding the raising of the flag. But
these passages are backloaded and suffused with a timidity at odds with much of
the rest of Flags, and they give us
three discrete time periods with which to deal, which is frequently a problem
for the movie.
points of inter-cutting are a bit arbitrary, and disrupt its flow. Eastwood and
editor Joel Cox seem caught midway between a more traditionally bifurcated tale
with flashback elements and a more mosaic, impressionistic style, flush with
vignettes of indeterminate time or location. Still, Flags
is interesting and evocative on many levels, and scores high marks for its technical merits; cinematographer Tom Stern captures black sand
kicking in every direction, and delivers a monochromatic look in which only the
occasional punch of blood is allowed to puncture washed-out hues of brown,
grey, black and olive. Whether mainstream audiences will flock to this far-from-flag-waving tale of a flag’s raising, however, remains to be seen. (DreamWorks/Paramount, R, 131 mins.)