Flags of Our Fathers

by Ari

You know something is wrong with Flags of Our Fathers once the first line of dialogue is uttered. Atrocious dialogue will sink a film no matter how impressive its other aspects happen to be. Titanic is the work of a highly skilled director in absolute command of his visual sensibilities, a technical marvel that unfortunately implodes because of its painfully artificial emotion and stilted writing. Flags of Our Fathers suffers from this exact same dilemma, but also lacks the visual and cinematic professionalism needed in all its other fields. It amazes me that Clint Eastwood, the accomplished director of Unforgiven, Play Misty For Me, Outlaw Josey Wales, and the excellent White Hunter, Black Heart, is responsible for efforts like Mystic River and now this terribly obvious and uninspired WWII drama Flags of our Fathers. It seems like a different filmmaker. Flags of Our Fathers is not the work of a veteran Hollywood legend - it’s the work of an amateur too inexperienced to handle such a large-scale production.

Beyond the average filmmaking is a disposable screenplay that has no reason to be acknowledged. Paul Haggis is one of the most confounding people in the business right now, a man who continues to be lauded for the sort of mediocrity that most critics and audiences pan. His writing is the very definition of simplistic, whether it’s his manipulative messages, flat dramatic beats, or useless sense of humor. Listening to an actor seriously state a line like, “we need to raise 14 billion dollars. That’s a million, with a “B”” is borderline laughable. It’s made even worse when you have actors who aren’t talented enough to make it seem passable. Flags of Our Fathers is problematic in almost every department. The performances, save for Phillipe, are phony and tedious. The pacing is uneven and messy. Technical credits are surprisingly weak, everything from cinematography to effects. Mixed together these shortcomings make for one of Eastwood’s lowest moments, and yet another tired addition to the overly stuffed war genre.

The war film, especially World War II, is one of the oldest genres in Hollywood history. And like every genre, most of the movies follow a very standard, simple formula. Flags of Our Fathers is about three soldiers who become American icons because of the famous picture of them and three others raising the flag during the battle of Iwo Jima. Once the picture hits newspapers it becomes instantly iconic. A sign of victory. The living soldiers from the pic are sent home to greet their fellow Americans and raise money for the war. The government needs people to buy war bonds, and they figure using the heroes of Iwo Jima is the perfect way to do so. The concept itself is fairly interesting. The soldiers are taken advantage of and become emotionally torn by their responsibilities, confused by fame and haunted by the people and experiences they left behind. Between their cross-country tour to raise money, Eastwood cuts back to the actual battle, the emotional center of the film. Unfortunately, the build-up and the actual battle sequences are botched, leaving no room for any dramatic development for the rest of the story.

The battle is the emotional crux of the film. If it doesn’t work, nothing will. What Eastwood does with the battle of Iwo Jima is baffling, relying on a heavy dose of CGI effects to recreate the terror of that dreadful fight. The battle sequences are wholly unconvincing. Instead of recoiling in horror at the violence, you’re stunned by how fake and shoddy it is. Large sections are comprised of all CG ships, guns, explosions, bodies, bullets, and backdrops. This is war for the videogame generation, the most ridiculously staged sequences of war violence and carnage I’ve ever seen in a “realistic” feature film. We see shots of CG ships firing at CG mountains, lines of soldiers standing in front of obvious CG backgrounds, tanks exploding into CG pieces - It’s all rather embarrassing, and I’m surprised that someone as experienced as Eastwood would even consider such a technique. And beyond that, the sequences are poorly shot and choreographed. Eastwood uses the usual shaky cam, constantly moving and panning camera tricks we’ve seen done better by Spielberg. And the cinematography during the battle sequences has the same washed-out colors we’ve seen from Spielberg in his far superior WWII effort.

If anything, Flags of Our Fathers makes me consider how tremendous Terrence Malick’s achievement with The Thin Red Line truly was. Malick presented something new - something with originality, voice, and genuine artistry. It’s the last time the war film has been something powerful and memorable, visually masterful and thematically profound. Flags of Our Fathers will be forgotten next week.