Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #49: Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

In the early 2000s Clint Eastwood chose to direct a duology about the Battle of Iwo Jima, one from the American perspective and the other from the Japanese. The Battle of Iwo Jima, fought in February and March of 1945, was one of the last major battles of the Pacific War (with Okinawa later in the year being on a much larger scale). Thanks to General Tadamichi Kurabayashi’s insistence on fighting a drawn-out defensive battle without the suicidal banzai antics, the Japanese were able to put up a lengthy defense and for the only time in the war inflict more casualties on the marines than they themselves received (though they themselves were almost completely killed off). Eastwood’s two movies on the battles were literally released two months apart at the end of 2006. The second, the Japanese-centric Letters from Iwo Jima, is a highly regarded film that humanized the Japanese soldiers (often portrayed as untranslated antagonists from reasons ranging from racism in older movie to the lack of survivors’ sources) and particularly gave western audiences a rare perspective.

Flags of Our Fathers, on the other hand, has gotten a mixed response. We’ll get into the why of it momentarily, but first I want to get to the real reason Iwo Jima has stood so tall in the list of American battles. It was here that the famous photo of the marines planting a large American flag was taken. This image became so iconic that there is a monument in Washington DC based on it. Eastwood’s movie is based on the book by James Bradley, the son of one of the men who helped raise the flag. It turns out that this simple, empowering image of American victory has a very complex and not too shiny history behind it, and that’s what the book and the movie explores.

As shown in the movie, the Marines fought a grueling battle to get to the top of Mount Suribachi, the most commanding height on the island. There was a dramatic moment where a group of six men raised a flag. However, Colonel Chandler Johnson believed the flag was too small, so another larger one was raised. This is the one that entered popular consciousness. Also, while six men raised each flag, they were not all the same. Confounding matters, none of their faces were visible. Thanks to the repeated flag raising and typical issues with memory, it became unclear who was actually in the latter photo.

The survivors get wined and dined. Left to Right: Ira Hayes (Adam Beach),
John Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), and Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford)

Half of the flag raisers die during the rest of the battle. The three survivors become “15 minutes of Fame” heroes, forced to go on a long war bond drive where they attend shows and give speeches. Navy corpsman John Bradley (Ryan Phillippe) is still not comfortable after his experiences on Iwo Jima, but tries to put up a good face. Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) actually enjoys his new celebrity status and his actual willingness to interact with the press and others make him even more popular. Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), a Pima Indian, is the most displeased with the bond tour, with his war trauma and heavy conscience about misidentified flag-raisers working together to slowly make him an emotional wreck.

The fame doesn’t last, and the three flag-raisers suffer from their experiences. Bradley actually leads a solid life, but is afflicted by nightmares and horrible flashbacks from Iwo Jima. Gagnon suffers financially, the business offers drying up quickly, and he has to become a janitor to support his family.

In an ironic and perhaps awkward twist of fate that, years after the movie came out, it was revealed that Gagnon and Bradley were not in the famous photo at all! Gagnon had raised and helped take down the first flag, but had nothing to do with the second. Bradley is even more ironic since his son was spurred to write a book about it. Considering Bradley hated talking about the flag (or the war in general) and thought it drew attention away from all the marines who actually died fighting, it’s hard to believe he was lying to gain fame, so likely he misremembered.

Sergeant Michael Strank (Barry Pepper using his boot camp training from Saving Private Ryan to use) was the only other marine other than Ira Hayes to be correctly identified in Rosenthal's photo.

Ira Hayes, though, is still acknowledged to have definitely been there. Unlike Gagnon and Bradley, Hayes managed to stay in the spotlight, albeit not in a good way. Relatives say that he was a quiet, sensitive soul as a child, so it’s no wonder that the horrors of the Pacific War afflicted him with trauma. He also did not feel worthy of all the praise thrown at him, perhaps a side effect of Pima culture where putting yourself in front of others to draw praise (an aspect of the war bond tour) is seen as a social no-no. This led to heavy alcoholism, and he was arrested over 50 times for public intoxication until his premature death in 1955, when he passed out in a ditch and died of exposure. Also, as a Pima man, he stuck out as the Indian who helped raise the flag.

As in real life, Hayes is the most memorable of the characters in Flags of Our Fathers. In the fifteen years since my first viewing, I remembered barely anything about Gagnon and Bradley, but I did recall Hayes’ emotional moments. The highlight is his historically accurate 1,300 mile trek to the home of the Block family, where he notifies them that their son Harlon was in the photograph and not Hank Hansen (who raised the first flag; he’s played by none other than Paul Walker). This moment shows how seriously his conscience treats him, and historically it raised awareness that there was a lot of misinformation about the Rosenthal photo. Interestingly, Ira Hayes was already the subject of a biographical film called The Outsider. While Tony Curtis plays him in redface, it's by all accounts a serious picture that deals with issues of depression, alcoholism, and race relations. Ira Hayes himself cameos in the John Wayne vehicle Sands of Iwo Jima.

From Suribachi, two marines look at the massive American fleet.

I’ve discussed the lead characters, now I’ll say why I think the movie didn’t land for a lot of people. Eastwood chose to film the movie in non-chronological order. For the middle bulk it’s easy to follow as it flashes between the war bond tour and Iwo Jima, but in the first twenty or so minutes it bounces around between the near-present, bond tour, Iwo Jima, and before Iwo Jima. Perhaps Eastwood wanted the Iwo Jima scenes spread out more throughout the film as a straight chronological order would have had the battle over by the halfway point.

The thing is Eastwood went out of his way in his Iwo Jima duology not to have too many cathartic battle scenes. While this worked in Letters from Iwo Jima because of the more engrossing characters, here it doesn’t make for the most viewable material. The beach landing scene, which turns into a bloodbath, is the only real gripping battle sequence. The rest are small moments that rely heavily on caring about the characters. That leads to the third major problem. Aside from Ira Hayes, the characters don’t feel too developed, not even Bradley and Gagnon, who don’t have much of an arc besides momentarily having a lot of fame from the flag-raising and then losing it.

The flag-raisers, accompanied by their bond your handlers, meet with Truman.

Before wrapping up, I should mention several other historical characters who have much smaller parts. Before his name was confirmed onscreen, I knew just from his foul-mouthed tirade that Gordon Clapp was playing General Holland Smith, the famously hot-tempered Marine commander. He was often called Howlin' Mad Smith. Franklin Roosevelt appears in the slimmest cameo, while David Patrick Kelly portrays his successor Harry Truman.

Overall, Flags of Our Fathers is a surprisingly uninteresting movie about one of America’s most iconic images. I’m not sure what went wrong, because the material and themes should work. It’s a story of how regular men got thrust into the spotlight and then discarded once they served their purpose, about how the truth is often much darker and cynical than the glorified propaganda, and the disconnect between what soldiers experience and feel with what the public makes of them.

Rating: 5/10

Hey, it's Monk's Randy Discher! (Jason Gray-Stanford as Lieutenant Schrier)