Flags Of Our Fathers Film Analysis

Should the American government manipulate information to the public in order to help support war efforts? The film Flags of Our Fathers by Clint Eastwood (2006) shows that after a long grueling battle on the island of Iwo Jima in Japan, U.S. troops take control of the island and the American Flag is risen on Mount Suribachi. This symbolizes a massive milestone in the war but it also misguides the American people towards thinking the war was over. This event becomes very controversial because the military ordered the flag to be risen again in order to have a picture taken of the men raising the flag and the photo was staged. The issue with this, is that since the war continued for another month, 3 of the men who originally rose the flag died

This scene occurred about halfway through the film (56:00) and it was the men’s first taste at the fame they would have to endure for many weeks to come. All three of the men in the beginning of the scene are walking through the crowd and are greeted by thousands of men cheering. Then all of a sudden you could hear someone yell out, “I heard the photo is staged, is this true.” The men were forced to either not respond or lie to anyone who asked if the photo was staged. When the men reach the stage, they are formally introduced to the crowd as the “Heroes of Iwo Jima” and the crowd begins to roar. Then, Rene Gagon goes to the microphone and says something very astonishing to the crowd, “As far as us being the heroes of Iwo Jima, that’s just not the case, we really didn’t do much at all, especially me, I was just a runner, that's it, I put up a flag, the pole we attached it to was heavy so it took a number of us and we got our picture taken doing it. The real heroes are dead on that island.” The crowd gasps for a second and then erupts again and nobody else speaks during the scene. Afterwards the film cuts to the men walking out of the rally. While the men were walking out of the rally, Ira and Rene get into an argument over what Rene said on stage. Ira claims that he was a hero on Iwo Jima because he did fire his weapon on the

First off, the movie shows some combat in the beginning of the movie but it lacks a lot of background information regarding these battles. The combat then fast forwards to the end of the war when the flag was risen so there is no space for historical information.Also, most of the movie is zoomed in on the biography of these 6 men who rose the flag the second time, it makes it very difficult for Eastwood to explain the rest of the war in-depth. A lot of the scenes in the movie are from after the war and the men promoting the purchase of war bonds across the country. Since a good majority of this film was based off post war events Eastwood intended to not show many details about the war in order to keep viewers entertained. If you were looking for more information about the war, I would suggest a movie that was more documentary driven and not a movie about a specific group of people's war experience. Before watching this film, I knew a lot of information regarding WW2 and upon completion of the film I really did not learn anything new. Eastwood’s narrative approach at this movie makes it lack details in comparison to a documentary based movie about the war. Overall, the movie was very entertaining to watch, but it was focused more on a war time story and not necessarily facts about the