Flags of our Fathers

Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers (2006) is conventional in form but innovative in its treatment of its subject. This may be one reason why conservative critics criticized the film. The title refers both to the flags that were raised on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima during the United States invasion of the island in World War II, and to the confusion surrounding the identity of the soldiers who did and did not raise the flags. The "fathers" are our own fathers, those fathers who fought in the war and who raised the flags—the fathers who made our modern lives possible, and to whom we owe enormous gratitude. The film is told from the present time viewpoint of a son whose father, one of the flag raisers, is dying. The son wants to know more about his father's involvement in the flag raising, so he investigates and talks to others who took part. This frame is an awkward contrivance (we saw something similar in the less ambitious Saving Private Ryan) but it works well enough. In fact, the frame is the result of the 2000 book Flags of Our Fathers by New York Times journalist James Bradley, about the men involved in the flag raising. One of those men was Bradley's father John. A character based on Bradley's father appears in the film.

The film deconstructs the story of an iconic image, the famous photograph of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. The first flag was raised on the fifth day of the thirty-five day battle for the island. U. S. forces had captured Mount Suribachi, and a flag raising was a natural conclusion to the event. When commanding officers and publicity men recognize the potential value of the image of the flag raising, they conduct a second flag raising, using some of the men who raised the first flag but using others as well (some of the original flag raisers were elsewhere or had already died in battle). Many pictures are taken of the second raising, including the photograph that made the event famous. The film shows how the U. S. war office exploits the famous photograph by sending several of the men involved in the flag raisings on a publicity tour to bolster national resolve and inspire patriotism.

Perhaps the most provocative aspect of the film is its portrayal of how the men involved in the flag raising were pawns in the political games of politicians and commanding officers. The most recognizable of these flag raisers was the Native American soldier Ira Hayes. Ill suited for publicity tours, he suffered from battle fatigue and depression, and the film suggests that he drank in order to be able to tolerate the public attention. In fact, the film suggests that organizers of the tour events supplied him with alcohol so that he would participate. Hayes became a severe alcoholic and ultimately died of the disease.

The film shows that after the war the men involved in the Suribachi flag raisings were abandoned and forgotten. They had played their roles and served their purpose. Thus what was initially presented as an act of heroic and natural patriotism, the raising of the flag over Suribachi, was in fact at least a partial fraud and deception, a staged event perpetrated by men who conduct wars without regard for the individual lives that wars destroy.

The flags of the film's title were in fact symbols of the exploitation that at least some of our fathers suffered at the hands of those who conducted the war.