Flags of our Fathers

Clint Eastwood filmed two movies about Iwo Jima. The first was Flags of our Fathers, based on a book of the same title, chronicling the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. The second covers the same battle from the perspective of the Japanese.

Although there is a kind of symmetry between the two films, the structure and tone are quite different. Letters from Iwo Jima restricts most of the story to what happened leading up to the battle, flashing back to the past to show how people ended up on the island. Since most of the Japanese soldiers were killed or committed seppuku, there weren't as many follow ups.

I ended up seeing Letters first. I read reviews of the film which favored that film over Flags. Thus I went into Flags with lowered expectations. I wasn't expecting it to be all that good. Just as I was expecting Letters to be very good.

I've begun to realize that how much one enjoys a film is partly determined by how much one hopes the film will be good.

In many ways, Flags of our Fathers is not really Eastwood's Saving Private Ryan. While that told a presumably fictional tale within a way, Flags is based on a real event and has constraints on how the story is told.

Spielberg shows the war from the immediate perspective of the men, and indeed wonders what kind of men go to war, from the reluctant hero (Hanks) to those petrified during the heat of the action, to gung-ho (alas, an Asian sounding term) soldiers. He wants to show that there were times spent merely waiting, trying to capture the day to day interactions.

What SPR does not do is to tell you the war from the perspective of the military leaders, nor try to tell you what's happening in the US at the time. Spielberg's preference is to focus on the immediacy of the war and raise some philosophical issues about fighting and the people who fight.

Eastwood's film is, on the other hand, more political. The actors picked to play the roles seem more "authentic" looking, a bit like Mayberry brought to Iwo Jima. This is not the story of the day-to-day happenings of the war, but chooses to survey it from the way the public saw war heroes and how the government manipulates them to get what it needs (in this case, war bonds).

Technically, I found this to be a better film than Letters, though emotionally, Letters is the stronger picture. I recall, a few years ago, there was some criticism of JFK. Teens, it was claimed, who had only seen JFK might not realize that the film is fictionalized and doesn't accurately convey what most people believe, but gives rise to conspiracy theories. The point was that teens are likely to learn history from films, not books, such is the power of movies.

Yet, it's true. I did not have any particular desire to learn about Iwo Jima. My knowledge of the battle was rudimentary at best. There was the famous flag raising, and there was a bloody battle. That was as much as I knew about this battle.

I had no idea that one of the guys was a Native American. Indeed, the film focuses on the discrimination that Ira felt as people called him "Chief", refused to serve him. There is an iconic scene in the film where Ira, giving speeches around the country to Americans to raise war bonds, eventually speaks to an audience of American Indians. He talks about how proud he is to be part of a powerful people.

The screen then shows the audience. Every one of the Indian is dressed in a full Westernized suit. Then, it pans back to Ira, who is also in a suit.

Its impact is not nearly as powerful as I'm sure Eastwood was hoping. But think about what you're seeing. The Native Americans were, over many years, taken over by the West, and eventually co-opted into a society that didn't always give them their just due. Films about cowboys and Indians were popular, and the Indians were invariably the bad guys. Yet, here was a "hero", or at the very least, a volunteer in the military, who was willing to give his life to the white man. Eastwood must have thought this to be an odd irony, of a conquered people who went to serve the conquerors to defeat another enemy.

Unlike SPR, Flags is really about how the perception of war rarely matches reality, and that's an intriguing take. It's about creating imagery to sell to the public, to make war palatable. In many ways, it points out how naive the public was. These days, such propaganda would be much harder to sell. We're more likely to be sympathetic to victims of disaster. Witness the outpour of support for the tsunami victims in Southeast Asia, or the victims of Katrina. However, at this point, during an unpopular war (which has yet to draft anyone), there's no attempt to raise funds from the public, no push to consider it the patriotic duty of every American to reach in their pockets and contribute.

How's the acting? Not bad. The actors seem instructed to act in the style of films from the era even as the story is a modern one. Rene Gagnon is the guy who serves as kind of the lead of the three men who survived Iwo Jima and raised the flag. Jesse Bradford has him perpetually smirking throughout. One decision Eastwood made, which is particularly odd, but shows the need to focus on the three men, was to pretty much ignore Gagnon's wife, who pretty much appears to be a trophy wife. Indeed, many of the women in the film are left to rather thankless roles. (By the way, the real Gagnon was actually rather stunningly good looking, where the actor was good looking, but a bit dorky too).

More time is spent on Ira Hayes story, the Native American, since his story is the most compelling. The least time is spent on John "Doc" Bradley (even though it's his son that wrote the book which the movie is based) who serves as doctors. Indeed, as much time as you spend with these three characters, you only get a true sense of Ira. The remainder of the time is really spent on how they were made into reluctant heroes then trotted to the public.

Indeed, the opening scene, which makes you think that the men are heading into battle, ends up being a set piece in the middle of a football field, and the bombs in the air are actually fireworks. The immediate reaction is to think of it as a trick. We've been tricked into seeing this as a battle. And then to criticize Eastwood for doing that.

But really, Eastwood is rather clever, because that's exactly the point that's made. The fireworks, which we traditionally think of as celebrations, is really a stylized bomb. It is a creative play on how we perceive reality, made more palatable, more enjoyable, after being dressed up some. It's exactly the same situation for these soldiers deemed to be heroes. The impact, like that of Ira speaking to the Indians, ought to be immensely powerful, but people don't react to the power of irony as they do the power of heroism or loss. These are emotions that are one level deeper than people feel immediately.

Indeed, Eastwood criss-crosses time, going between the present, the time after the war, and the war itself, perhaps as skillfully as he's ever done, and yet, it's not a film about heroism or the attempt to be heroic, and so it resonates less than Spielberg, who realizes emotionally, there's more impact in people questioning why they are at war, and what it means to give one's life, than to talk about how meaningless some of the actions were, and how many horrors were hidden and sanitized (much like the fireworks sanitize battles) to present to a public who wasn't ready to know what this violence was truly like.

Letters, on the other hand, focuses on the individuals, and their history. Its story is purer, and simpler. The Japanese believe more keenly in their honor, even if not everyone buys into it. There isn't the same kind of cynical attitude of the Japanese government, and so we're more immediately drawn into the day to day action. So, this becomes, I'd say, Eastwood's complement to SPR, even as Spielberg could never make a film from, say, the German perspective. (Indeed, although Amon Goeth is a memorable baddie, the other Nazis are made out to be cartoonish).

The closest Spielberg has come to making a film that is critical of Jews (or Israelis in particular) is Munich (haven't seen it though), which tells the story of how Israel sought to get revenge on those who killed the Israeli athletes in Munich, and how, over time, it meant less that the "right" people were being killed, than someone was being killed who could serve that role.

I think, in hindsight, people will see Flags as a very technically proficient film and Letters the better film. Both have its flaws, especially, prodigious underlining of obvious points (e.g., in Flags, how the heroes weren't really heroes but did it for their buddies. This line is said out loud, but the film doesn't have the time to really develop friendships in a way where it would be shown to us. In Letters, there's the general feeling of how Japanese are people too, how some of them really did like the US (note: there's no equivalent of Americans liking Japanese culture), even though, practically speaking, hardly anyone should have known. In particular, the scene with the Oklahoma soldier who's captured and talks to the Japanese Olympian.)

So why did I enjoy Flags better? I have to admit it's partly because I didn't think I would like it. I learned something about the war. I liked how Eastwood works all the various timelines together. Yet, in hindsight, I have to say, even though I was not as enamored with Letters, the characterization was far stronger in that film. You never got a sense if the three guys even liked each other, and even if they didn't (after all, war throws you in), it makes for a less compelling film because of it.

So, two flawed, but compelling films.