This was a story that had to be told. I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but it’s about that famous photograph of the soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima, its impact on the war, and the men behind it. It goes back and forth between their time overseas (much of it in combat) and their time in the states after the photo. There is an upcoming companion piece called Letters from Iwo Jima, which tells the Japanese side of the story. This explains why they are largely faceless (and voiceless) in this film.
I’ve heard comparisons to Saving Private Ryan, but I had a very different emotional responses to those movies. After Saving Private Ryan, I walked around shell shocked, for two days, thinking about how we should avoid war at all costs. And while the combat sequences in Flags were violent, they didn’t bother me nearly as much. Instead of walking out numb and fearful, I felt shame for the way my country treated (used, discarded) those men. I also felt a newfound respect and appreciation for the soldiers fighting for us today.
When the credits came up, I witnessed something in the audience I’d never seen before. People had started to leave, some almost at the the exits, when photos were displayed along with the credits. They were vintage photos from the war, including some photos of the men portrayed in the film. Everyone stopped and watched the photos. Not one person left before the credits finished. It was a nice communal moment.
If you like this film (and I’m sure you will, it’s a great film), I can recommend two others. The first is Tora! Tora! Tora!, a classic movie about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It shows both the American and Japanese points of view, shot with separate American and Japanese casts and crews. It’s well edited to preserve the timeline, for which it received an Oscar nomination (as well as for sound and f/x). The other is The Best Years of Our Lives, a 1946 film about 3 men who return from the war. It does a remarkable job of illustrating the differences between your rank in the Army during wartime, and your rank in society when you return. This just swept at the Oscars, taking home seven, including Best Picture (which it also won at the Golden Globes and BAFTA).
How would you describe the makeup of the audience that saw this movie with you?? Were they mostly older adults or were there some teenagers and families mixed in there?? When I attend art movies, I notice that the audience is a little on the older side, and that they treat the movie with more reverence. No one is jockeying to be the first ones out of the theatre, and groups of people will sometimes stay behind and talk before getting up and leaving. Obviously they do not have a standing Starbucks get-together afterwards.
I will probably catch this movie later, just to see the re-enactements of that battle for the island of Iwo Jima. I read that we lost 25,000 soldiers and marines on that one battle alone. I usually think of this number when we hear about 2 or 3 marines killed in Iraq on a daily basis. This does not mean that the lives of the 2 or 3 men and women were less tragic, I’m just saying that I think about the numbers. I wonder how many people died today in traffic accidents and falls in the home, and I wonder if the reporting of the deaths in Iraq has a bias, if this number is being skewed to favor someone’s agenda. I just wonder.
The men in the photograph were used to satisfy just such an agenda, as their story in the movie suggests. I will not go any further just in case there are others that have not seen the movie. But it sounds like it does a good job in presenting the good, the bad and the ugly parts of the American effort in WW2.
If you want a good take (with lots of humor and opinion) on the Japanese side of WW2, read Mike Rogers’ ruminations from Tokyo:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers/rogers178.html
As a japanese american living in Japan, he’s listened to a lot of stories from WW2 veterans on the Other Side. He’s also got a lot of interesting views on Japanese and American culture and politics. He’s intense and I don’t always agree with him. But his pieces are thought-provoking. He’d give Howard Stern a good run for his money (Mike is proud to have been kicked off a myriad number of radio station jobs).
The audience probably did skew older. To start with, it’s rated R. The point was that a large number of people were already headed for the exits, not just a few.
According to Wikipedia, we lost far fewer than 25,000 soldiers (6,821) in Iwo Jima, which is, of course, still a huge number. But it was the Japanese who lost over 20,000 men. And while it was “one battle”, it lasted from 2/16-3/26/45, about 38 days.
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima
The Iraq war has claimed over 2,800 US soldiers. The Iraqi civilian casualties range from 50,000 using only deaths reported by news sources, to a staggering 600,000. The latter estimate tries to take into account the lawlessness, terrorism, and infrastructure damage the war has caused, esp. to their healthcare system. According to one report, it’s back to 1950’s levels, even though it was quite modern before the Persian Gulf War.
In addition to the loss of life, the war will cost us about $1 trillion dollars. We’re at $379B right now, but we’ve got a ways to go, and must consider where we’d be if that was spent on stuff like creating jobs and funding research (or lowering taxes or the deficit). And I notice nobody is saying anything about being paid back by Iraq’s oil money, since it needs it all to repair all the damage we’ve done.
It really does suck.
But to get back to your point of reference, in WWII the human race lost 62 MILLION people. It’s hard to wrap your mind around it.
Yes, I agree that we will never see any Iraqi oil to pay us all back for the war cost in materiel and lives, American and Iraqi. This is a real crime, since we could have handled the peace as well as we handled the invasion. Rumsfeld should really be getting hanged by his thumbs on the evening news, every day, for this fiasco. Instead, he’s allowed to resign and keep on repeating the same clueless lines. I hope the GOP uses him as the whipping boy for the loss of Congress a few weeks ago. I just cannot believe that he was allowed to stay in his position for as long as he did, and interfere with the military minds that knew better. Vietnam all over again.
Let’s look at the bright side of this Iraqi mess. It’s allowed me to use the word “morass” on a daily basis. It’s a great word and brings up all sort of imagery that’s quite appropriate in this situation.
The watching of the credits after the movie was slightly erie. It took a few minutes for people to realize what was happening in the credits so I would estimate that a good 2/3 of the audience had already gotten up and left their seats (it was a small theater). There was one exit on either side of the seating area and there were at least 50+ people standing in each exit area watching the credits along with those who remained in their seats. The erie part was that I don’t recall any sound during that part of the credits (not sure if it’s due to bad memory or the fact that there was no sound) and there was not a sound in the theater. It was clear that the photos were used to set up a lot of the scenes in the movie because there were exact reproductions of the photos in a lot of the scenes. Also uncanny was how much some of the actors looked like the actual individuals portrayed in the movie. I could hear a few people in the audience comment to that effect when their photos came up in the credits.
While I enjoyed and recommend the movie, I was a little surprised by the content. I had heard nothing about the movie prior to seeing it and I thought it would mostly be about the actual battle of Iwo Jima. The movie really only covered about the 1st 5 days of the 38 day battle with a clip here and there of other parts of it. It seemed to focus mostly on the story of the people involved. I realize it’s difficult to project yourself into a certain part of history but even still, I can’t imagine how anyone could stand for the way that some of the people in the film were treated. I would be amazed if you ever see anything like that happen in our future.