Flags of our Fathers

(movie Review)

Well, this movie has finally made its way over to Japan. It doesn’t seem to be quite as popular over here as “Letters from Iwo Jima”, but I guess that’s to be expected.

Shoko, after being informed by me that this was the companion to “Letters from Iwo Jima” (or vise versa rather) became really excited to see this movie, and rented it the day it came out. But the movie turned out to be what neither of us were expecting.

Most of you are probably better informed about this movie than I was. I was expecting a standard world war II movie: the explosions, the yelling, the confusion, the shaky camera, the best friend dying, and all the other horrors of war brought into your living room.

Although this movie has most of those elements, the main story is about the famous “Raising of the flag” photograph taken at Iwo Jima, and the surreal lives of the men behind it, who suddenly found that the simple act of getting their photograph taken while raising the flag made them overnight into national heroes.

In my opinion, this makes for a much more interesting movie. Standard war movies certainly have their place to help us understand what the average soldier goes through, but there are only so many of those you can watch, especially after “Saving Private Ryan”, “Band of Brothers”, “Thin Red Line” and all the other war movies we’ve had in the past few years.

The story of the men behind the flag of Iwo Jima, and how they dealt awkwardly with their newfound fame, is a story that I was completely unaware of before, and one that deserves to be told. (Actually a bit of internet research reveals that this is not the first time their story has been told, but at least it’s the first time for our generation. I had no idea before seeing this film.)
My internet research also reveals there is a bit of a debate about whether this is a patriotic film or an anti-war film. It is easy to see how you could go either way on this film. It does certainly touch on issues of government propaganda and media manipulation of the war, and one could easily make parallels to the way our government tried to frame the story of the Jessica Lynch rescue, or the Pat Tillman death.

However, politics aside, I thought it was just a really interesting story. And it does make you think about the nature of heroism and the culture of celebrity.

As with a lot of war movies, it is often hard to tell who is who in all the confusion. And the fact that this movie jumps around in time doesn’t help. I was halfway through the film before I felt like I had a good handle on what was going on, and who was narrating the story. Some of this was probably intentional, but I think it could have done with better editing just the same.

For me this was one of those movies that I thought was only so-so when I was actually watching it, but once it was finished I found the story really stuck with me and gave me a lot to think about afterwards.

Link of the Day
Postal Rate Increase Threatens Independent Media
May 11, 2007: A scheduled postal rate hike designed by Time Warner, the largest magazine publisher in the United States, is threatening the viability of several independent publications that will likely see rate increases of more than 20%. Large publications will see rate increases of less than 10%.

Flags of our Fathers: Movie Review (Scripted)