Film Review: Flags of Our Fathers

Flags of Our Fathers (2006). Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by William Broyles, Jr. and Paul Haggis.

Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, the first of two films the director made about the Battle for Iwo Jima, focuses its lens on a small group of GI’s who fought there and raised the flag on that barren island. It is also the story of how the famous photo of that flag being planted became part of American myth.

The Suck-It Up Generation

There are some stunning images in this movie. The film opens with a young soldier lost in a dreamscape, calling out for someone –a lost buddy? He awakens from the nightmare into the arms of his loving wife. Fifty years have passed and he is old, and still terrorized by memories and dreams of war. He was part of the generation of young men that went to war, saw horrors they couldn’t name and came home without words for what they had seen. As if by silent agreement, they chose to remain silent and suck it up.

I grew up in one of those families with a father who had been through hell. I know the price he paid as a man, and the price my family paid for what could not be spoken. For we too suffered. Whether in the form of alcoholism, domestic violence of family abuse, the war took a toll on more than its soldiers. For them, and for us, it was not a good war.

Witnessing the Unbearable

Another scene that lingers is during the harrowing battle for Mount Suribachi. Screams, explosions, bodies everywhere, one Marine feels something bounce off his helmet and turns to see the decapitated head of his friend. In shock, he cannot take it in. After the popularity of the Iwo Jima flag photo, a group of these men are sent back home to sell war bonds. They cannot integrate the horrors and losses of battle, with the falsity and hype of the bond drives. They are not heroes they assert; the real heroes are the men lying dead on the beaches.

Alive, So Alive!

The final scene is one that for me, crystallizes the brilliance of Eastwood’s work as a director. After 35 days of battle and unrelenting carnage, an officer directs his young men to take a break and go for a swim in the Pacific. At the peak of their youth and vigor, these exhausted men frolic and frisk in the water while sun glints from their bodies and waves whisk the sands.

This is not the proper place for a discussion of WWII and whether it should have been fought or how. There were overwhelming and compelling reasons for that war at the time. Nevertheless, the costs of that war were profound and are still being felt. Eastman’s film gives us a vivid picture of war that sears both heart and brain.