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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. |
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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."
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