Recommended movies

Last night I finally sat down to watch Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. I’ve had both movies for a few days and sort of had to steel myself to spend the time watching two war movies. That’s not a genre that I usually enjoy, but I’d heard some glowing reviews of both movies. They are both Clint Eastwood/Steven Spielberg productions, which promised, if nothing else, something a little different in the war movie genre.

Flags of our Fathers tells the story of the taking of and flag raising on the godforsaken hunk of rock called Iwo Jima in the flagging days of the second World War. According to the film, the US government was nearly bankrupt with the war effort and public sentiment was turning against the war. And then, after a fierce and bloody battle, US troops took the island and six men were forever immortalized in the raising of the American Flag atop Mount Suribachi.

The above photograph was taken by an Associated Press photographer, Joe Rosenthal, following the battle for Iwo Jima and became one of the most celebrated images of the war. Rosenthal won a Pulitzer for the photograph, which appeared in almost every Sunday newspaper across the country on February 25, 1945. The US government, recognizing the photograph for its iconic value, immediately capitalized on it to raise funds through War Bonds to continue financing the war effort. Regardless of the ethical issues involved, the public relations value of the photograph was never in question. While the movie concentrates mostly on the story surrounding the famous photograph, it is also an unvarnished look at war. The film doesn’t romanticize war nor does it make value judgments, from the public relations perspective to the battlefield perspective.

Letters from Iwo Jima is the companion film to Flags of our Fathers and, in my opinion, the better of the two films. This movie is from the Japanese perspective and is more character driven. The story was partly pieced together from soldiers’ letters that a young Japanese soldier had buried in a cave just moments before Iwo Jima fell. This was a harder movie to watch, knowing that the characters were doomed from the beginning credits. The General in charge at Iwo Jima knew it, too. And much of the story’s power derives from doing what has to be done for one’s country even when the end result is never really in question. The General knew pretty much from the beginning that he and his men were being hung out to dry. There are honorable soldiers and there are some who are not in a dispiriting situation like that. Honor means different things to different people. History is left to judge. Neither a romanticized view of war, the film is, however, a humanizing portrayal of Japanese soldiers. Not a treatment we’ve been accustomed to seeing with WWII films.

I would highly recommend both films.