Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Clint
Eastwood's Flag Day
(Flags of Our Fathers, 11/6/06)
By Nicholas Nicastro
Clint
Eastwood has always had the looks of someone with gravitas, but
only lately has he delivered. After what seemed like an endless run
of mediocre Westerns and copsploitation flicks, he shocked the critical
establishment in 1992 with his complex, compassionate Unforgiven.
After seeing it for the first time, I recall someone in the theater
standing up and declaring "Well, that was a real movie!"
Other "real movies" have followed, including Mystic River
and Million Dollar Baby, mixed in with a few clunkers (Space
Cowboys, Absolute Power, Blood Work). The latter remind us that
Clint the Squint was indeed a hack before he became a visionary.
Considering the subject matter of
his latest film, and the current wartime context, there was never a
chance Flags of Our Fathers would get anything less than a respectful
reception. The most famous photograph taken in World War II—at
least on the Allied side—was the raising of a US flag on Mt. Suribachi
on the island of Iwo Jima in 1945. The actual flag-raising was something
of a non-event compared to the searing combat that preceded it. Flags
tells the story of the Marines in the picture, who became icons with
its publication in every major newspaper, but who couldn't avoid the
crippling personal consequences of a battle that took 6,821 American
and 20,000 Japanese lives.
Three of the six who raised the
Suribachi flag survived the battle: John Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Rene
Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach). By this time in
the war America was winning on the battlefield but spent financially.
If the latest war bond campaign failed to raise $14 billion, claims
the screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis, the Allies might
have to accept a peace short of total victory. Bradley, Gagnon and Hayes
are therefore whisked from the black sand of Iwo Jima to the red carpets
of a nationwide bond promotion tour. The tour becomes both tacky and
surreal, with the three survivors asked to strike heroic postures they
don't believe they've earned. The absurdity reaches its climax when
they are obliged to reenact the famous tableau atop a paper mache mountain
at Chicago's Soldier Field.
Fair warning: the film's action-packed
previews give the false impression that Flags is Saving Private
Ryan in the Pacific. In fact, it is a small, quiet story, shot with
Eastwood's usual penchant for gloom. The survivor who did the most hard
fighting was Hayes, a Native American from the Pima tribe of Arizona.
He's also the most haunted, barely able to hold himself together on
the tour, antagonizing the brass with his inconvenient genuineness.
Bradley, who never fired a shot, seems best to understand his role as
a symbol; Hayes, a Navy medic, has his own demons to fight as memories
of lives lost under his care rise to the surface.
To be sure, there's a fair amount
of raw spectacle here. The American invasion armada, with its retinue
of buzzing escort planes, is seamlessly visualized; when the fleet opens
up on Mt. Suribachi with everything but the kitchen sink, Flags
for a moment becomes the spectacle Private Ryan was not. The
Japanese garrison, itself only sparingly glimpsed, strikes back with
such stealth it seems the land is defending itself. (The film, interestingly,
was shot not on Iwo Jima but Iceland, which has similar volcanic beaches.)
Yet Eastwood's interest in the actual
battle seems incidental at most. The film's real subject is the arbitrary
nature of heroism, which when it settles on unsteady shoulders can destroy
as surely as bullets. All this certainly rings true, as does the proposition
that soldiers fight for each other more than for any principle or flag.
But none of this is particularly new. Phillippe, Bradford and Beach
are convincing in their roles, but their story becomes something bland
and nutritious, like K-rations. Sitting through the film begins to feel
like a civic obligation—one in which I was not so much moved as
moved to nod in agreement.
Ironically, there is one haunting
moment that had nothing to do with combat or the famous photograph.
As the fleet crosses the Pacific, a Marine accidentally tumbles overboard.
His buddies laugh it up as his bobbing head recedes behind the ship—until
they realize that none of the hundreds of vessels can break formation
to rescue him. The Marine drowns alone, in a calm sea, before thousands
of sympathetic, impotent witnesses.
©2006 Nicholas Nicastro
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