Go ahead ... make my V-day
Clint Eastwood saunters into WWII with a fistful of thematic unity
DYLAN FERGUSON VOLUNTEER STAFF
Clint Eastwood, the director, is a lot like his “man with no name” character from the spaghetti westerns: he doesn’t say more than he has to, he gets the job done without flair, and when it comes to shootin’, he damn well shoots straight.
In a time when overblown “auteur” filmmakers like Terrence Mallick take seven years off between films, 76-year-old Clint’s working-man approach to cinema is admirable. He’s made almost one movie every year since 1971, and he’s always improving his art.
Flags of our Fathers, the director’s latest, may seem like a departure from that tradition because it is a great, sprawling period piece. Whereas 2004’s Oscar-winner Million Dollar Baby barely used a single shot or technique that would not have been familiar to moviegoers in the ’30s, Flags features sweeping computergraphics vistas to rival Troy. But this is vintage Clint nonetheless. CGI be damned, the heart and soul of Flags is sparse, unassuming directing, quiet, compassionate character development, and dialogue scenes that let the themes emerge with simple assurance.
Besides shooting ropes from around people’s necks, this is what Clint Eastwood does best.
Flags of our Fathers is the story of three of the six men who raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima, as immortalized by the famous photograph. (Though I wouldn’t expect a movie about those guys who draped the stars-and-stripes over Saddam’s statue’s face anytime soon.) It’s based on a 2000 book by James Bradley, the rights for which were originally purchased by Steven Spielberg, who handed them over to Eastwood backstage at the ’04 Academy Awards.
Spielberg, who serves as coproducer, initially commissioned William Broyles Jr. to write the screenplay, but Clint had Paul Haggis
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
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do a rewrite. Reunited with the great director, Haggis manages to avoid the grandstanding and overcharacterization that have marred his latest screenplays, Crash and The Last Kiss, and comes up with an interesting, focused narrative.
Jumping back and forth between the Battle of Iwo Jima, the aftermath of the photograph, and a few scenes showing the aging veterans being interviewed for the 2000 book, we learn about those three surviving flag-erectors (the other three died within a week of the picture being taken). They are Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) who takes to the publicity, Doc Bradley (Ryan Phillipe) a “nice guy” field medic disturbed by the loss of his friends, and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), a Native American soldier who can’t pull himself together after what he’s seen.
As Hayes, a role previously inhabited by no less a thespian than Tony Curtis (seriously, in 1961’s The Outsider!) Winnipegger Beach gets the juiciest role, crying, getting drunk and hitchhiking cross-country, and he fills it with impressive screen presence.
Eastwood has no great ideas on how to reinvent cinema or make it more exciting, but, as always, he knows how to develop a theme. Flags is not as potent as Mystic River or as humanly sympathetic as Baby, but it has the director’s trademark compassion, and some interesting ideas. This is actually the first of a two-part project for Clint exploring the battle of Iwo Jima from different perspectives. The Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima, which recounts the war from the other side, is due out in January. Like Tora, Tora, Tora! split into two films . . . but good.
That image of Old Glory being planted into the rocky hillside inspired the American public to believe victory was at hand. In reality, the flag was raised on the fifth day of a 40-day battle. As Ira, Rene, and Doc are pulled out of active duty to go on a war-bond publicity tour, they have to struggle with a government that wants their help, but seems to have little actual concern for its individual citizens.
What’s more important: the truth, which is engraved forever in these three men’s heads, or the idealized fable, which may be able to help out the nation?
It’s a powerful theme that hits its mark with the no-nonsense precision we’ve come to expect from the man with no name. Actually, watching Flags of our Fathers made me think of another Western hero — John Ford, whose classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance contains a brilliant line of dialogue.
“When the legend becomes fact . . . print the legend.”
