Dir.
Clint Eastwood, US, 2006, 132 mins
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach
Review by Carol Allen
What one might
term the inciting image of this film and the book on which
it is based is an iconic war photograph that was comparable
in its impact inside the US to the world famous one of
Kim Phúc, the little
girl badly burned by napalm running down a road in Vietnam.
In 1945 news photographer Joe Rosenthal immortalised the
moment in World War II of six men raising the American flag
during the battle for the island of Iwo Jima in the war in
the Pacific, The photograph was splashed on front pages all
over America and inspired a great wave of patriotism and
optimism that America would win the war. But while the 1972
photograph became a focal point for the anti Vietnam war
campaign, Rosenthal's pic and the three survivors of the
six men who were in it were used by the US government in
their campaign to sell war bonds to raise much needed dollars
to continue funding the war.
Eastwood's film is therefore not a
conventional "how
America won the war" movie, although it acknowledges
the bravery and hardships of the men who fought, but an insightful
assessment of the effect on those three men both of the carnage
preceding the photograph and the subsequent effects of them
of that manipulative spotlight. The three men in question
are John Bradley (Phillippe), who was the father of James
Bradley, co-author of the book; Ira Hayes (Beach), a Native
American, and Rene Gagnon (Bradford).
Before the American troops landed
on Iwo Jima, the Air Force had bombed it repeatedly, turning
it into a desolate place as barren as the moon, inside
which 20,000 Japanese soldiers were hidden in tunnels in
a clever and lethal defence strategy. To emphasis that
sense of desolation Eastwood drains virtually all the colour
from the screen, making one doubly conscious of the futility
of war itself, epitomised in the struggle for this now
nearly dead rock. 7,000 Americans died and almost 20,000
were wounded in the battle for Iwo Jima, while nearly 19,000
Japanese lost their lives. The scenes of actual battle
are distressingly realistic, full of confusion and carnage,
with the Japanese hardly seen, just experienced though their
bullets and grenades. We will see them later in Eastwood's
twin version of the campaign "Letters from Iwo Jima",
which tells the same story from the Japanese point of view.
The moral heart of the film though is in the scenes in America
with the authorities determined to exploit this piece of
photographic serendipity to further a war in which the country
is losing heart and the effect it has on the three men they
are lionising as war heroes. Phillippe is restrained and
mature as Bradley, stoically enduring the plaudits of the
crowd, while knowing full well from his experiences that
this hollow thing called "heroism" is a result
not of lion hearted courage, but of being scared witless
and doing what you are forced to do for yourself and your
comrades in an effort to survive. Bradford is effective as
Gagnon who revels in the spotlight of his temporary fame.
But the heart rending performance comes from Beach as Ira,
known affectionately to his comrades as "Chief",
whose cheerfulness turns to despair, as he loses himself
in alcohol in order to cope with his unwanted fame and indeed
some appalling racism in the country he has been fighting
for.
Rather than telling his tale chronologically, Eastwood moves
around in three time scales - the brutal training regime
and battle the soldiers endure; the war bond campaign in
America; and the surviving soldiers as old men and this last
element in particular is not very clear and quite difficult
to get a grip on. As a movie it is something of a long and
gruelling experience. But I have nothing but admiration for
its moral purpose and impeccable performances.
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