Sunday, October 22, 2006
Friday Movie Review ( late)
Went alone to see Flags of Our Fathers, the new Clint Eastwood (as director) flick about the second raising of the American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945 and its long term sequelae. It was pretty good in a stately, safe way. I don't think it showed how really horrible the fighting was, but it did show a Hollywood version of it, which might be all we civilians can stand. Its most moving moment was a father and son scene on a hospital death bed 50 years later (at least that's what made me mist up--women, I admit, might react differently). Pretty solid performances. I have never like Ryan Phillippe more. One portrayal was a little jarring--it was tough to accept the bad guy from The Warriors as President Truman.
Let's get some quibbles out of the way. I have hated the radio ad campaign for the film which starts with the ludicrous statement, from the film: the right picture can win or lose a war. What bull crap--supporting a bumper sticker mentality which short changes the average American citizen. In the movie, the older cynical press whore says that the image, during Tet, of the summary execution of a captured, not in uniform, VC by the Saigon chief of police lost us the war. Yeah, right. (Actually, if you could put it to a single image, it was the self immolation of the Buddhist monk four and a half years before, which sucked moral support out of the war to the ultimate detriment of the effort). Joe Rosenthal's cropped photo of the flag raising (which was simultaneously filmed) is a nice, popular image but its effect on the eventual outcome of the war was nil to minimal. Even the War Bonds tour success, which is about half the movie, was not war winning despite the self serving statements of the white haired bureaucrat spearheading the use of the surviving marines to raise war revenue. We spent about 70% of our GDP on the war, such was the effort it took to defeat the competent, dedicated, imperial, fascist nations we fought, indeed, two of the more competent nations on Earth. We borrowed an amazing amount (in percent of GDP) to fund that effort and near the end our credit might have been getting a little tight. But the Marines did OK on Guadalcanal with minimal funding. The war in Europe was two months away from ending; we'd have muddled through to August and the one, two punch of nuke weapons and superb Soviet forces entering the war. I've spent too much time on the fundamental untruth of the movie.
The focus is on the three individuals, the flag raisers who survived the rest of the battle, prisoners of chance, who were called heroes for lifting up a pipe with a bigger, replacement flag (an action actually irrelevant to those on the island) when they know that they were not, at least compared to the other real, dead heroes. That human context is what Eastwood actually does best and it sustains the movie and makes it worthwhile. What he fails at is to convey to us what made the real heroes so deserving, what was so ineffable about that combat (I guess any combat) which made it near impossible for the veterans to talk to those who weren't there (as the flag raisers mention), indeed made it impossible for the veterans ever to talk about it. Eastwood can't recapture in Iceland the real hell on Iwo. As grueling as the first 30 minutes of battle in Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg couldn't either. What's missing from both is the tension of involvement. I felt it in the first Russian roulette scenes in The Deerhunter, which scenes were bull pucky historically, but we couldn't stand the wait for what would happen next. I guess the word for what's missing is intensity. In the two recent WWII movies, we're dispassionate, uninvolved observers of interesting images but it's not really giving us a safe taste of what it was 'really' like. At least that's what I think.
The weapons used were historically accurate as far as I could tell. The equipment was too. The CGI was pretty well integrated. All in all, it's a grand show of a very tough battle in a very tough war when we were tougher and more united and more dedicated to making the world a better place by destroying evil institutions through the supreme sacrifice of our average joes whom circumstance turned into uncommon heroes. You get to see a little of that, so it's well worth a look.
Let's get some quibbles out of the way. I have hated the radio ad campaign for the film which starts with the ludicrous statement, from the film: the right picture can win or lose a war. What bull crap--supporting a bumper sticker mentality which short changes the average American citizen. In the movie, the older cynical press whore says that the image, during Tet, of the summary execution of a captured, not in uniform, VC by the Saigon chief of police lost us the war. Yeah, right. (Actually, if you could put it to a single image, it was the self immolation of the Buddhist monk four and a half years before, which sucked moral support out of the war to the ultimate detriment of the effort). Joe Rosenthal's cropped photo of the flag raising (which was simultaneously filmed) is a nice, popular image but its effect on the eventual outcome of the war was nil to minimal. Even the War Bonds tour success, which is about half the movie, was not war winning despite the self serving statements of the white haired bureaucrat spearheading the use of the surviving marines to raise war revenue. We spent about 70% of our GDP on the war, such was the effort it took to defeat the competent, dedicated, imperial, fascist nations we fought, indeed, two of the more competent nations on Earth. We borrowed an amazing amount (in percent of GDP) to fund that effort and near the end our credit might have been getting a little tight. But the Marines did OK on Guadalcanal with minimal funding. The war in Europe was two months away from ending; we'd have muddled through to August and the one, two punch of nuke weapons and superb Soviet forces entering the war. I've spent too much time on the fundamental untruth of the movie.
The focus is on the three individuals, the flag raisers who survived the rest of the battle, prisoners of chance, who were called heroes for lifting up a pipe with a bigger, replacement flag (an action actually irrelevant to those on the island) when they know that they were not, at least compared to the other real, dead heroes. That human context is what Eastwood actually does best and it sustains the movie and makes it worthwhile. What he fails at is to convey to us what made the real heroes so deserving, what was so ineffable about that combat (I guess any combat) which made it near impossible for the veterans to talk to those who weren't there (as the flag raisers mention), indeed made it impossible for the veterans ever to talk about it. Eastwood can't recapture in Iceland the real hell on Iwo. As grueling as the first 30 minutes of battle in Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg couldn't either. What's missing from both is the tension of involvement. I felt it in the first Russian roulette scenes in The Deerhunter, which scenes were bull pucky historically, but we couldn't stand the wait for what would happen next. I guess the word for what's missing is intensity. In the two recent WWII movies, we're dispassionate, uninvolved observers of interesting images but it's not really giving us a safe taste of what it was 'really' like. At least that's what I think.
The weapons used were historically accurate as far as I could tell. The equipment was too. The CGI was pretty well integrated. All in all, it's a grand show of a very tough battle in a very tough war when we were tougher and more united and more dedicated to making the world a better place by destroying evil institutions through the supreme sacrifice of our average joes whom circumstance turned into uncommon heroes. You get to see a little of that, so it's well worth a look.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 9:15 AM 
