Flags of our fathers6/24/2023 ![]() ![]() Eastwood, himself a virtual Mount Rushmore presence on the American scene, can ventriloquise this persona very well. With toughness and stubbornness, the film insists on the unpleasant realities of war through the voice of a now aged and grizzled participant. Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers is a long way from Audie Murphy in The Red Badge of Courage, a long way from Henry Fonda in The Longest Day, a long way from the intentional horrors of Apocalypse Now, come to that. He is accidentally shot by other US forces, at a time when friendly fire was another thing not to be mentioned to the folks at home. Then there is the posthumous flag-raiser Mike Strank, played by Barry Pepper - another link to Spielberg and Ryan - whom everyone feels really is a hero. (It's the exact opposite of the famous scene in The Cruel Sea, where an agonised Jack Hawkins says: "But there are some of our chaps in the water.!") Hardly any civilian can really imagine himself killing or being killed in war, but we can all imagine ourselves being that poor conscript sap, falling in the Pacific and left to drown by our own side. " mutters Bradley, and this first death in action, more blood-chilling than anything else that happens, colours the whole movie with its themes: chance, anarchy, absurdity, the indifference of the war machine, un-heroism, un-glamour. His buddies jeer, thinking that he will be rescued. One soldier is shown aboard ship as the massed fleets steam in for the invasion, leaning over the rail and cheering wildly at the bombers overhead. He takes on some taboos that Spielberg wouldn't touch with a bargepole - or a flagpole.įor example: the horrible way men would die in simple, ridiculous accidents. But Eastwood goes much, much further than Spielberg. ![]() In fact, the concept of removing soldiers from war by a compassionate quirk of procedure and fate is also similar. Steven Spielberg is a producer of this film, and its beach landing scenes owe an awful lot to Saving Private Ryan. And all this time they are perpetuating not exactly a lie, but something that is a million miles from the meaningless chaos and butchery of war as they experienced it. They must also participate in showbiz recreations of the photo at vast sports arenas, complete with deafening gunblasts - as traumatic, in their nightmarish postmodern way, as real battle. ![]() They are made to attend giant banquets serving ice-cream creations in the shape of their famous photo, tactlessly smothered in strawberry sauce. John Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and the Native American Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) are shown reeling with what would now be recognised as survivor guilt, trauma, disorientation and crippling anxiety that one of the flag-raisers had not been acknowledged in the official record. Three were later killed in action the others were shipped back to the home front, showered with praise and luxury and made to tour the country selling war bonds to raise money. The faces turned away from the lens gave this remarkable picture a universal "unknown soldier" look, and its extraordinarily dramatic power, with figures heaving the flag against a lowering sky, conveyed the impression that it was almost happening in the very heat of battle.Įastwood tells the story of what happened to those six men. Six US soldiers, in some haste and confusion, raised a flag tied to a Japanese water pipe, and then repeated the event later in the day with a bigger, more visible flag and a press photographer present. This is exemplified in the story of the famous flag-raising photo taken during the victorious battle in 1945 at Iwo Jima, a barren island of volcanic sand and rock: America's first piece of Japanese soil and an important strategic base for the looming invasion of Okinawa. Flags of Our Fathers is about the Liberty-Valance-ism of warfare, the industrial production of myths and memories to sell war to the civilian population on the home front. UK | Movies | Movies (function(w,d,s,l,i) uk | Flags Of Our Fathers | Warner Bros. ![]()
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