Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

Starring Ryan Phillipe and Adam Beach; Directed by Clint Eastwood

Flags of our Fathers is a wrenching look at a terrible battle in WWII, and also an object lessen in celebrity and hero-creation, and the equally terrible costs therein.

The battle of Iwo Jima was 40 days of close-in combat between 22,000 dug-in Japanese defenders and the 100,000+ Americans attacking the island. Once the island was conquered it served as a forward base for U.S. planes attacking and bombing Japan.

One of the more famous photographs of WWII was taken a few days into the battle, of five Marines and a Navy corpsman (medic) raising an American flag on the top of Mount Suribachi. The picture became famous as a symbol of hope for the U.S.’s eventual victory in the war. So, the U.S. flew the surviving Marines and the Navy corpsman who raised the flag back to the U.S. to go on a tour of the country. As the U.S. Treasury Secretary explains to the soldiers, the U.S. is broke, and can’t afford to continue to pay to fight the war unless it sells people a lot more war bonds. So the soldiers tour the U.S., acclaimed as heroes and lionized by politicians as they talk up war bonds.

But the soldiers hate being called heroes; they had simply been ordered to raise the flag on Mt. Suribachi during a lull in the fighting. It was, in fact, not even the first flag to be raised there. But a photographer was with them, and caught that indelible image of apparent herorism during a horrible battle.

Adam Beach is excellent as an American Indian who’s one of the Marines; he’s tortured by his memories of the battle, and the gap between what he did during the battle and how he’s being treated on the tour. This is a tough role, and Beach does a great job portraying his character’s agony. Beach was a standout in the earlier movie Windtalkers.

Eastwood is a master of his subject; we get a kinetic feel for the hellish experience of the soldiers as they fight on Iwo Jima, as well as for the mood of the public as the war neared its end.

Though filled with violence and sorrow, this is the kind of movie you’d want our leaders and politicians to see (and pay attention to) before deciding whether to send our country’s young men and women into war. The movie portrays all the terrible events of Iwo Jima with a gritty realism that refuses to make war look either fun or rousing. Instead, it’s about soldiers struggling to survive amidst unimaginable terror and chaos. The contrast of the war with the empty bond-selling tour is extremely effective. Eastwood shows us all of this without ever preaching.