Flags of Our Fathers is based on the best-selling book by James Bradley (the narrator of this film) and co-written with Ron Powers, which chronicled the battle for Iwo Jima and the fates of the surviving flag raisers.
One moment caught in time in an iconic photograph of six men who raised an American flag over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, provides the basis for the story of Flags of our Fathers. Five Marines and one Navy Corpsman raised the U.S. flag on a desolate volcanic island of black sand beaches and scrub brush hills pockmarked with sulfurous caves that prove war is hell.
Flags was shot in Iceland and it certainly looks like hell on this Iwo Jima. Iceland was only other place on earth with a similar terrain and appropriate sulfurous smoke trailing up to the sky from any crack in the ground.
For these men caught in this Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Joe Rosenthal, the battle for Iwo Jima was only just beginning as the flag was raised only after the first few days of a fight that went on much longer. Only three of the six men survived the assault and the two surviving Marines and the one surviving Corpsman were pulled out of action and sent back to the U.S. to bolster sales for the government's seventh war bond tour. Through their efforts they were able to raise $24 billion for the war effort though their war at home and within themselves continued on after they returned.
But these men couldn't leave behind the friends they fought with and they felt guilty every step of the way once they left Iwo. They were selected to be heroes, but they never felt they had done anything heroic. Their compromises with the truth leave them troubled and in emotional pain. Hayes can't stop drinking and all three men can't stop thinking about the men they left behind on Iwo Jima. Confusion about exactly which soldiers were actually in the photo - and the fact that there were actually two different flags raised - only added to their personal problems.
Article comments