The  First Battalion of the 28th Marines on Iwo Jima: A Day-by-Day History from Personal Accounts and Official Reports, with Complete Muster Rolls (Paperback)
Rated 5 stars at amazon.com
470 pages, 10" x 7 1/2"

    REVIEWS: Edwin Hopkins, Christian De Matteo, Joe De Matteo   

By Edwin Hopkins
Email Mr. Hopkins

Super

The six soldiers raising the American Flag at Iwo Jima is one of the most enduring icons of World War II. But I, like most Americans, had no idea who these men were, or what the full story was behind this major event in the annals of war.

The idea and subject matter is not all that original. The late Rod Serlimg niched his own take on it in the Twilight Zone episode “Quality of Mercy” in which an unmerciful U.S. Army lieutenant is suddenly transformed into a Japanese soldier counterpart and experiences the war from the other side.

Steven Spielberg’s (producer) influence is felt from the beginning when American forces storm the beaches of Iwo Jima, the first battle of WWII to be fought on Japanese soil, reminiscent of D-Day. With the massive amount of ships and reinforcements, victory was inevitable.

Suddenly these six service members are thrust into the spotlight. The trio of survivors, Hayes, Gagnon and Bradley are shipped back to the states, with Hayes totally reluctant because he insists he’s not a “hero”, and being treated like Hollywood celebrities. You realize when they have an audience with a government official, that all the hoopla wasn’t all they were brought back for.

Flags of Our Fathers was a sincere labor of love for Jim Bradley, son of Doc Bradley played by Ryan Phillipe. It wasn’t until after his father passed that he discovered the legacy he left behind. Screenwriters Paul Haggis (Crash) and William Broyles honor this legacy in dialogue reflecting the seriousness of the time. They condense the work to it’s most essential elements and characters for exploration.

Cinematographer Tom Stern matches the tone of the script by using decolorization, subdued colors for a more nostalgic look appropriate for the era. He practically teases you with the many contrasts, not all color, yet , not all black and white. And it works especially well with the battle scenes.

Eastwood’s pacing of Flags slows gradually once the battle is over giving one the opportunity to really examine how these men’s lives were changed. His main players Jesse Bradford (remember him from “Hackers” and “Swim Fan”?) and Ryan Phillipe grant strong performances as Gagnon and Bradley, trying to show as much enthusiasm as the crowds who cheer them on while on tour. Most notable is Adam Beach’s Ira Hayes, the Arizona Native American whose attitude is diametrically opposed to his fellow flag raisers.

This heartfelt film is a testament to a single moment in history I never realized had so much to say. Not just about the brave men who raised the flag, but also the war itself, the politics involved. As I mentioned above, the pacing gets slower. In fact it downright bogs down. However, it all leads to a proper closing stage that will leave all, if not most, satisfied.
 

Raise High the Flag, Soldier:
A Double Feature From the Man with No Name
by Christian De Matteo

HUGE - Flags of Our Fathers
HUGE - Letters from Iwo Jima

Heather, my beautiful fiancée, for all her perfection and consistent ability to astound me, will not go see war movies.  And, upon some thought, I’ve decided this too is part of her beauty.  There simply is no place for evil in her psyche, and the slightest touch of it haunts her.

I, on the other hand, exist in my fascination with the evil men do, not out of any sort of desire to reproduce it, but, quite the opposite, at the capacity of man to commit it.  Why? is the question always in my mind and I’ve always searched for answers.

All this is simply by way of explaining why my review for Flags of our Fathers, a truly brilliant and moving film, comes only now.  First, I missed the preview, and, as Heather is with me most weekends I knew there was no way I was going to get her to see it, after it had gotten its mainstream release.  Then, because of the travesty that Flags was only in theaters for an exceptionally brief period of time, I was never able to schedule a weekday trip.  To my great chagrin, to top of all my anxiety about missing this, Letters from Iwo Jima was released three months early and the hideous possibility arose that if I wanted to see either in the theater I was going to have to see them out of order.  I knew that one didn’t necessarily have to follow the other, but, as an artist of sorts myself, I wanted to follow the directors vision.

Weeks of searching for Flags in a theater led me nowhere and the imminent early release of Letters loomed right on the horizon.  I was very perturbed.  But one fateful trip to a superb Westchester movie theater to see the magnificent Volver, all my prayers were answered… well, not all of them; I’m still no where near rich and haven’t been published in forty-two languages, but, for movies, things were better.  The Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York, had announced that on January 2, 2007 (the first time I write this sequence of annual numbers) they would not only be showing Flags on the big screen but back-to-backing it (the greatest way to watch movies) with Letters from Iwo Jima.  Bill and Ted’s evil robot doppelgangers might have called this a “full-on robot chubby” moment.  And they would have been right; I was deep in movie lover lust.

D

I bought my tickets on the spot, and for my account of the evening, click this entire line.

So last night my father and I, Heather out with friends talking of happy things like our impending wedding and whatever the hell else she and her friends discuss when I’m not there to spin the conversation into the darker corridors of the universe, went to the Jacob Burns and watched Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.

Wonderful.

I was going to write two separate reviews but to do so seems out of step with the intention of the films.  They are certainly two different films that stand proud and erect on their own and could, unquestionably be reviewed separately as I’m sure most other reviewers will do.  I don’t want to.  I want to discuss them as I watched them, as a moment in history lived twice from two different sides of the world.

What an incredible project.  What the movies are, to me, are a celebration of the human spirit to endure the things men do to each other.  The film isn’t about the reasons we fight, nor the love or hatred of fighting, but of what William Faulkner always referred to as the human ability to endure, an important word.  Few soldiers on either side are gung-ho party-liners, that’s not what this is about.  This is about duty, responsibility, doing what’s right and, most of all protecting those around you, those you love, both at home and your brothers in arms.

First, let me address the color.  Both films are shot as though they were black and white, and, as I’ve been discovering more and more in modern film, almost-black-and-white is a powerful thing when done well.  Allowing for the inclusion of flesh-tones and the colors of explosions and blood, the washed out feel of both movies continues the job of costume, set and style for placing the films firmly in a time.  The coloring also manages to place more importance on the human being, because, in a washed-out landscape, the human shows through.  That same technique of coloration allows the director some freedom in depicting things even R-rated films are too tame for, extreme, graphic war wounds including external innards, mortar shell amputations and other horrors of war.  While the movie seems harsher because we are able to see these things we ordinarily, hopefully, aren’t privy too, Eastwood at the same time takes it a bit easy on us by using the grainy quality of the film and color to not overwhelm us and take us out of the moment.  Our horror, as a result, isn’t for ourselves suffering through the viewing, but still for the soldiers suffering through the war.

The direction, needless to say after the last paragraph, is tremendous.  I will admit that I am generally a Clint Eastwood fan, but I am certainly no Eastwood apologist.  I am still bitterly angry about the abortion that I believe the end of Mystic River to be, an ending so asinine, unnecessary and unclear that it taints the entire movie for me, despite the fact that I enjoyed 85% of it a good deal.  None of it seems to matter anymore.  I enjoyed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil well enough, but felt it was overlong and too far a stretch from the excellent book it was based on.

Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, however, are perfect.  Clearly, these are the films Clint Eastwood was meant to direct.  You can feel his heart beating through both pictures, as well as his intellect.  This is a project made with love and intensity.  These are films made to a purpose.  These are two of the best war movies I’ve ever seen.  What Eastwood manages to do here is intellectually bridge the gap between pre-Vietnam and post-Vietnam Hollywood understanding of America, American politics and war.  Cutting all reactionary sentiment and curtailing any Rah-Rah enthusiasm, Eastwood pushes away from the advertising needs of history to tell the truest story he can find, true to history and true to humanity.  And humanity’s passions.

And what two casts he found to do it.  Ken Watanabe, who won me over in The Last Samurai, despite the debacle that was that film’s “Tom Cruise ending” (which even that couldn’t destroy the whole film for me), is terrific.  Part of this is because of the universe Clint Eastwood gives him to play in.  Letters from Iwo Jima is as much a Japanese film as Flags of Our Fathers is an American one.  Letters has the pacing, feel and hum of Kurasawa’s Rashomon or Seven Samurai, perhaps even more so his Stray Dog.  When the Japanese soldiers claim to be more disciplined than American soldiers we see that more clearly in Eastwood’s two halves, his Letters half directing in a less immediate and more weighed style.  Flags is bombastic, fast, and loud.  When the scenes are quiet, the emotions still run high, heavy, overwhelming, American emotions.  In Letters, all is done in peace, even war scenes seeming to verge on contemplative, howsoever that is possible.

Ryan Phillippe and Jesse Bradford are fantastic, playing their parts one quiet and subdued, one loud and advertising.  Tied together with Adam Beach’s excellent Ira Hayes (which always make me start singing the Johnny Cash song to myself), the trio of War Bond Billboards tie Flags together completely with matching performances in different worlds, peacetime and wartime, showing themselves to be clear, three dimensional real people, all with different understandings of life, some able to move on, some really not.  These three are the heart of what makes the lacking chronology of the film soar, make it clear that to tell this story in order would only do a disservice to the emotion and morality of the film.  Flags takes place in at least three different time periods mainly, but works seamlessly for both dramatic purposes and emotional and intellectual resonance.

I pause now, realizing I’ve said this a lot, emotional and intellectual… and perhaps that’s because it was what most struck me about the films.  They were the products of thinking men and women, director Eastwood and writers Paul Haggis and Iris Yamashita (who certainly deserves Oscar attention for her beautiful and thoughtful screenplay, even if a bit overwrought for a few moments) who understood that their story was of people first and foremost.  Emotional and intellectual.

Kazunari Ninomiya must as well be mentioned, playing a tremendous role as Saigo, the reluctant soldier, who meets Kuribayashi, Watanabe’s dedicated and decided General.  Together they find a middle ground, and that middle ground ties together the two films.  Aristotle once said, In media stat virtus, and Eastwood seems to be repeating it here.  In Letters, Saigo and Kuribayashi are the perfect vehicles for the delivery of this message.

And so I could go on, but I won’t.  If you can see Flags in theaters, do.  See Letters while it’s still around.  If you can see them back to back, don’t miss it.  I can’t thank the Jacob Burns Film Center enough for allowing me this privilege.  I wish more theaters would do this kind of thing more often.  I am very lucky to have caught the showing I did, as it was the only time both were being shown together.  I saw at least a hundred people waiting for stand-by tickets who had to be turned away from this one showing in Pleasantville, New York.  Truly a shame, as this is really the only way a lover of film should see these two masterworks from the old cowboy we used to only think of as the Man with No Name.

So much for having no name. 

PREVIEW:
Clint's most ambitious project to death is his dual movie release of Flags of our Fathers and the tentatively titled Lamps Before the Wind.  Telling the story of the battle of Iwo Jima from the point of view of the Americans in Flags of our Fathers and the point of view of the Japanese in Lamps Before the Wind, Clint sets out to release both movies at the same time and give Americans a true view of one of the most vicious and deadly battles ever fought by Americans.

TIME magazine has a terrific article about the project here:
TIME ARTICLE:  "Clint's Double Take."

MASTERFUL
By Joe De Matteo

HUGE

It is hard to talk about one half of this masterful project, but I am determine to do so.  Each film is a worthy, excellent and moving landmark of our time.  Clint Eastwood traveled a long and varied road to become a great filmmaker.  I watched Rowdy Yates and envied his cool, while still in high school.  Fist Full of Dollars came out the year after I graduated, then I marveled at his cool on the big screen.  Those years of big screen spy films kept a backseat to westerns for me, much due to that Man With No Name.  Next I was wowed by Harry Callahan. 

In later life when I started doing a local radio show, John Harper, a friend and successful radio personality, told me I sounded too unsure of myself, I needed to build confidence.  I should picture myself looking at ease and cool - Dave (Eastwood) in Play Misty For Me was the first image that came to mind.  However, the dis-likeness was so HUGE, that I was pushed to new lows of self confidence.  (My solution, by the way, turned out to be the company of a friend, Dennis Kirby, and my son, the charming Christian De Matteo).

You see, the implications of this project are so great, they even bring me into it.  And you know, that is the power of, what I've been calling, Eastwood's Iwo Jima Project.

One holding.  One grabbing. 

Flags is about the grabbers.  And my, how they did grab. 

We have an America that has finally caught up in terms of material - the weapons of war.  They have turned the tables on the Japanese Empire and have now effectively destroyed their Navy.  Tit for tat.  Albeit in open battle.

America's bomb factories had been working overtime, and then some, and those bombs were put to work by the thousands.  The island was pounded for days.  And then the relentless machines were sent in, the Marines.  things would be different now then they had been at the beginning of the war, in places like Guadal Canal, where a few hundred Marines were sent in at a time against overwhelming numbers, to gain a foot hold, and do so with little to no support.  They died by the hundreds.  Then when only a hand full were left, the DOD would find a few hundred more Marines to throw into the meat grinder.

 Both Films: DVD 
 

Certainly the Japanese killed a smaller percentage of Marines and Sailors, but the numbers were still high.  The fighting was fierce and terrible.  Whole companies were all but wiped out.  We just had more men to through at them.

Our Flag was planted on the fifth day of the invasion.  You've seen the picture of that flag, I'm sure.  But the battles raged on for 31 more days.  It was the Japanese that had no reinforcements, who were running out of ammunition, who's numbers were dwindling.  And, who continued to fight from holes and caves.

Flags tells that story of those men, in the embodiment of a few of them.  It tells the story of three of the men whose picture was taken raising the flag on Iwo Jima, the picture we all know so well.  (A picture only to be duplicated with that of the New York City firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero in September of 2001.  The 2001 flag had two more stars, but filled the hearts that saw it in those terrible days with the same feeling of hope.)

These men, Doc Bradley, Rene Gagnon and Ira Hayes, would tour the states raising money for the war effort, but they took the war with them everywhere they went.  Through their eyes, memories and pain we learn the story of the other men that they fought beside, their brothers in arms; young men who stayed behind to fight and die, or who were already dead.

I heard my son once explain to his youngest sister why all stories, fairy tales, cartoons, all stories had to have a scary character (a bad guy), there had to be some tension, some fear, some uncertainty or the story would be boring.  She was perfectly content with cute and boring stories (he still isn't).  But maybe the reason the bad guys and bad things that happen to our favorite characters are needed is to prepare us for real life.  Because... what is around the corner? 

We don't know.

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