Flags of Iwo Jima

Few great movies exist that are not subject to flaws. This is nothing new. It is rare, however, that great movies  are such in spite of flaws quite as big as the ones that face Flags of Our Fathers, a Clint Eastwood-helmed war film that uses the iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising photo as the centrepoint for a bold and sometimes shockingly vicious mission to re-evaluate just how we as a society should necessarily feel about World War II.

I know this to be the movie's mission, because writer Paul Haggis (working here with William Broyles, Jr.) was afraid I might not pick it up and helpfully has one of his three lead characters state it out loud in just about every scene. Namely soldiers John Bradley (Ryan Phillipe, in a rare turn of not making me want to punch him), Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), the three men responsible for putting the flag up that day who lived long enough to report on the experience to their superiors.

Ira is also Native American, something Paul Haggis would like to point out at every possible opportunity, because apparently he wasn't quite done being condescing about race issues in America after the suffocatingly preachy Crash. This is to say nothing of Ira's DRINKING PROBLEM. Barely a scene passes in which he is not seen DRINKING ALCOHOL, or teetering around and being belligerent because he is DRUNK, at which point someone will remark on how very DRUNK he is, and that just maybe his DRINKING PROBLEM is the result of POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS. Because he was a SOLDIER. In the WAR. And you WEREN'T. I could happily hang shit on Paul Haggis and his shortcomings as a writer forever, but that would be a great disservice to the film and to anyone reading this review. Suffice it to say that Flags of Our Fathers is not at all a good script and leave it at that.

Thank god then, that Eastwood was not at all interested in sitting back and letting the script carry the film. It is his work (with, of course, his regular collaborators, cinematographer Tom Stern and editor Joel Cox) that elevates the film from 'Flags of Our Fathers, terrible script' to 'Flags of Our Fathers, entirely respectable war movie'. Anyone who knows anything about Eastwood as a director will find no surprises here - his usual minimalist aesthetic is here in full force, but it is used to uncommonly good effect. Where Haggis will bleat the same theme at us scene after scene, line after line, Eastwood far more adeptly layers subtle meanings over every shot, carefully, patiently and totally without mercy deconstructing and demythologising World War II without ever daring to marginalise the efforts of the people involved.

Generally speaking, the film operates on three levels: on the base level is the day of the landing on Iwo Jima, depicting the struggle to take the island and the activities surrounding the flag-raising itself. On top of that is the War Bonds campaign in the months after, following the three living flag-raisers on a tour of America to drum up public support for the war effort. On top of that sits the modern-day efforts of one of the soldiers' sons, trying to do the same thing as the film itself - piece together the events of that day and clear away the mess of publicity and hero-worship that has since distorted them. His third, unspoken role is to fill up a totally unnecessary narration track explaining in detail the movie's themes. Also generally speaking, the further things get from Iwo Jima, the living beating heart of the film, the worse they become as Eastwood is less and less able to save the script from itself.

When that heart is exposed, though, Eastwood siezes the opportunity with both hands. Having already established that one cannot understand the sensation of being in a warzone through film, he instead opts to shoot the battle scenes like some kind of hellish dreamscape. Iwo Jima as it appears in Flags (played by Iceland) is sparse, unforgiving and devoid of life (in the words of one of the film's characters, "an ugly, smelly, dirty little scab of rock"). Even at their most hectic the battles that take place there have a bare and surreal quality that gently reminds us of the unknowability of war. Even then Eastwood maintains his careful, controlled visual style, focusing as much as possible on the men fighting it and the way this is, for them, all part of the job they signed on for. And all without using graphic violence as a crutch, like some war movies I could mention. In these moments Flags is unimpeachable, and it carries its themes across in a way that the rest of the film's talking on the subject could never hope to.

So no, the film is not a home-run by any stretch; such a huge disconnect between script and film is never a desirable thing and the movie founders for much of its not-inconsiderable running time. A leaner, meaner script without any of the relentless Haggising (in particular, lose the damn framing device) to go with the brutally lean, mean visuals would have left Flags of Our Fathers in far better shape. As-is it's an uncommonly restrained and humane -albeit unfortunately preachy - war movie that struggles to hold itself entirely upright without its sibling for support. Ah, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.