"Flags" buzz

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Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (Dreamamount, 10.20) has been seen on the Left Coast, and it's "damn good," according to a certain eyeballer. The word is that some kind of limited peek will be given to a select group within a few days. That doesn't mean anyone's necessarily going to write anything about it straight away. Let's see how it plays out.

There's a certain John Fordian echo in Flags of Our Fathers that I won't explain but which I loved hearing about this morning. If the film has a primary focus, it's about the battle between war legend and war reality -- the space between the legend of battlefield heroism as promoted in political speeches and by war memorial statues, and the reality of what it actually is for the men who lay their lives on the line.

But the comment that really raised my eyebrows was a thought passed along to this witness from a voice in the Eastwood/Warner Bros. camp, to wit: as good and admirable as Fathers is, Letters From Iwo Jima -- Eastwood's lesser-budgeted film about the Japanese forces who fought the Americans on that volcanic island in early '45, and which is acted entirely in Japanese -- is "a better film."

This is obviously just an opinion, just one guy talking, etc. But when you consider the persistent questions about whether Letters will in fact be released in December '06 or sometime in January '07, well....what are people thinking? Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima are joined-at-the-hip movies -- same war backdrop, same battle, same director, same color scheme. Some of the same incidents, according to Peter Bart's 9.3.06 Variety piece, are depicted in both.

How, given all this, can they not be considered as a single unified work? What person with any respect for what Eastwood has apparently constructed here would argue for Flags to be released on 10.20.06 and Letters to be released in January '07, which would mean that the latter wouldn't qualify as a '06 Best Picture candi- date? Especially given that guy's view that the Japanese film is the "better" work?

I reviewed Paul Haggis's Flags script last April -- here's a portion of what I wrote:

"Flags of Our Fathers is about the loneliness and apartness of young soldiers living in two worlds -- the godawful battle-of-Iwo-Jima world where everything is ferocious and pure and absolute, and the confusing, lost-in-the-shuffle world of back home, where almost everything feels off and incomplete.

"There are many, many characters in Flags but it's basically about three of the six young Marines who raised the American flag on a pole atop Mt. Surabachi during the Iwo Jima fighting in early 1945, resulting in a photo that was sent around the world and came to symbolize the valor of U.S. soldiers.

"Three of the flag-raisers died in battle soon after, but the three survivors -- John Bradley (Ryan Phillipe), Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) and Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford ) -- were sent home to take bows and raise funds and build morale on a big public relations tour arranged by the military.

"And the film -- the script, I mean -- is primarily about their vague feelings of alienation from their admirers and even, to some extent, their families. And vice versa.

"Heroes, a narrator says at the end, are something we need and create for ourselves. But the soldiers don't get it or want it. They only feel for each other. They may have fought for their country, but they died for their friends."

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on September 23, 2006 at 4:09 PM

comment #1

Griff says ...

Flags is the only end-of-year film I have any interest in seeing on the big screen.

Posted by Griff at September 23, 2006 5:00 PM

comment #2

TKC says ...

I dunno -- the DreamWorks strategy actually seems pretty smart to me. I mean, to me it sounds like there's a real danger that Flags and Letters would split the Best-Picture votes, and thus result in a victory for some other movie. By contrast, if the studio were to release Flags on Dec. 31, and Letters a few weeks later, just when the ballots are being mailed, the Academy might think more of Flags when it comes time to nominate the '06 movies, and then -- come Oscar season '07 -- DreamWorks/Paramount, with piracy concerns vastly diminished, could do a massive DVD mailing, a la "Crash", to remind viewers of it.

Posted by TKC at September 23, 2006 5:41 PM

comment #3

p.Vice says ...

Left Coast?

Posted by p.Vice at September 23, 2006 6:49 PM

comment #4

Sid Yobbo says ...

If both movies are that good it could be near-suicidal to put them in competition with each other for Best Picture. As much as I agree with Jeff about the two movies being 'joined at the hip' both films also look like Oscar contenders so inevitably there are strategic considerations. If Letters gets released in mid-January that's still less than two months between the movies (I can't believe that's long enough to damage the perception that these are two closely linked movies) & if it's as good as early word suggests the associated publicity & audience interest in Letters will likely boost audience/critical interest in companion piece Flags & give that film the boost it needs to push it ahead of its rivals in the final voting.

Posted by Sid Yobbo at September 24, 2006 4:33 AM

comment #5

Sid Yobbo says ...

:that's still less than two months between the movies

Oops, that should be three months of course.

Posted by Sid Yobbo at September 24, 2006 4:34 AM

comment #6

EDouglas says ...

"That doesn't mean anyone's necessarily going to write anything about it straight away."

Rrrrrrrrrright.

Posted by EDouglas at September 24, 2006 5:19 AM

comment #7

Nicol D says ...

The more I read about this, it seems like a tale of the WWII generation as seen through the eyes of the Vietnam generation. My father had me late in life and was in WWII. I spent many afternoons listening to him and his friends tell stories as I was a child.

They were not stunned.

They were not disillusioned.

They were not resentful of their cause.

They did not have ambivalent feelings towards their country.

They did not spend the rest of their lives distant, cold and aloof.

This film is beginning to go so far down my list in wanting to see it that I can barely see it anymore.

This thing will probably be a critics darling for its apparent jaded, cynical politics, but for the WWII vets who are still alive, I suspect they will see very little in it that they recognize.

Posted by Nicol D at September 24, 2006 10:47 AM

comment #8

travis b says ...

no offense nicol, but i don't think your father's experience in world war II is a universal feeling. his is one aspect, just as much as "flag of our fathers" is anothers experience. i don't think it's claiming that it's what everyone went through or feels about the war.

Posted by travis b at September 24, 2006 11:45 AM

comment #9

TKC says ...

Nicol D -- With all due respect, it sounds like you're setting up a straw man here -- nowhere in Wells's account does he say that the soldiers in "Flags" are "stunned", "disillusioned", "resentful of their cause", "have ambivalent feelings toward their country" or "spend the rest of their lives distant, cold and aloof" -- what he says is, they have "vague feelings of alienation from their admirers". That hardly sounds like the World War II-era "Born on the Fourth of July" you're pre-emptively criticizing.

Posted by TKC at September 24, 2006 1:19 PM

comment #10

calartian says ...

The book itself is very much about the soldiers' inability to convey to the public and their families the true nature about what they had been through. Concomitantly it is about the different ways different soldiers dealt with that disconnect after the battle and after the war. That is not quite the same thing being disillusioned.

At the very end of the book, the author, son of one of the flagraisers, finally uncovers the event his father witnessed that caused his father to be so reticent the rest of his life. I doubt they will be able to show it in the movie.

Not everyone of course was shocked into reticence, but I recommend very highly Paul Fussel's book Thank God for the Atom Bomb for a veteran's discussion on US Marines in the Pacific.

Posted by calartian at September 24, 2006 2:12 PM

comment #11

Sid Yobbo says ...

calartian, I know the event you're referring too & I agree it would be unshowable in any detail but the makers of the film clearly have something in mind as that person is indeed in the film. He's played by Jamie Bell.

Posted by Sid Yobbo at September 24, 2006 2:34 PM

comment #12

Spigster says ...

I have seen FLAGS and it is extrodinary. All the preformances are strong, but kudo's for putting your nomination on Adam beach, whose riveting and soulful performance as the tortured Ira Hayes deserves acclaim and awards.

Posted by Spigster at September 24, 2006 6:26 PM

comment #13