reasonably impressed
Added 9/22/2009
With only a few reservations, I have to say I was reasonably impressed with this Clint Eastwood creation that documents the life stories of the men who raised the American flag at The Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. I thought they did a convincing job of showing us how facts and reality can be so liquid, how the government and military tries to manipulate the public and, ultimately, how the public so craves certain icons--heroes to hold high on their shoulders, worthy of such status or not--that they're willing to believe whatever they're sold. The war scenes I found brutally effective and gripping, something you just kind of sit there and absorb in a trance, vaguely thankful that the path of your life has never taken you there. I was also struck by the casual, accepted racism towards the Native American Ira Hayes. What a different world it was then, worse in many ways, but so much better in others as well. Using a cast of relative no-name actors also added to the overall effect for me; rarely was I thinking, Oh I remember him from some other movie or TV show. I did feel it dragged on at the end, getting perhaps overly sentimental with certain aspects. But still, I liked it overall. And the photo sequence that ran during the credits that was capped off by a film shot from the memorial on Iwo Jima today was a fitting touch to end on.
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Flags of our fathers
Added 8/28/2009
The movie helped personalize the fight of the generation that went before me. My father was a career man in the army and fought in WWII and the Korean War. Clint Eastwood did a wonderful thing by making this movie and the companion film, Letters from Iwo Jima. Both entertaining, informative, and insightful.
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The Cliche Holds True
Added 8/24/2009
More than ever... the Book is Far Better than the movie. The movie was a bit disjointed and didn't really delve into some of what made these men tick. The complexities associated with feelings experienced by the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, survived and then went on a war bond tour cannot be done justice on film. Too much detail is missed.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Flags of Our Fathers
Added 8/2/2009
I have not taken the time to view this DVD; yet, others have watched it and said it was good. I am sure that when I take the time to watch it I will appreciate it. {I purchased it to go along with my Clint Eastwood collection.)
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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A war is only heroic before it starts
Added 6/30/2009
To take the battle of Iwo Jima and show how that war, that turning point, maybe not, that dramatic apocalypse, for sure, of the Second World War, American side, is a pure illustration of what an apocalypse is: a revelation. Clint Eastwood with his Steven Spielberg accomplice demonstrate that revelation and its secret content. The kids who are sent to a war, any war, all wars, are no heroes whatsoever and in any way but they are the flesh and dough of the cannons of the enemy, or rather the other side. And they even have to lie and play heroes to get the dough the government needs to continue and finish that war. Those heroes are associated to flags and the raising of flags on a pile of ruins to show and inspire victory, be it in Iwo Jima, Berlin or Hiroshima. Heroes are fabricated for the sole reason that they are needed to go on with the lucrative and politically essential war, on any side of the conflict. For one flag, and in this conflict hardly more than half a dozen flags for fifty five million dead. That makes each star on the flags, when these flags have stars, quite expensive. There is no clean war, there is no un-staged war, there is no just war. There is only war, war horror and staging the horror to make it palatable to those who do not live it, have not lived it, do not remember it. And some invent a duty to remember, an obligation to keep in mind, even when we are two or three or more generations after the conflict and we do not have direct witnesses to speak of it any more, and their word is only their word modified by time, propaganda, celebrations and simply the desire to forget. There is no obligation to remember, even if there is an obligation to make, not only permit them to, historians go on with their work and try to reconstruct what has disappeared forever anyway. In fact a poet could be more effective in that direction than a historian who is paid for his work and tends to follow the trend of whoever pays him, be they publishers or politicians, or committed associations on one side or the other of the many rivers that run through historical time. Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg do a marvelous work along that line.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
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reasonably impressed
Added 9/22/2009
With only a few reservations, I have to say I was reasonably impressed with this Clint Eastwood creation that documents the life stories of the men who raised the American flag at The Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. I thought they did a convincing job of showing us how facts and reality can be so liquid, how the government and military tries to manipulate the public and, ultimately, how the public so craves certain icons--heroes to hold high on their shoulders, worthy of such status or not--that they're willing to believe whatever they're sold. The war scenes I found brutally effective and gripping, something you just kind of sit there and absorb in a trance, vaguely thankful that the path of your life has never taken you there. I was also struck by the casual, accepted racism towards the Native American Ira Hayes. What a different world it was then, worse in many ways, but so much better in others as well. Using a cast of relative no-name actors also added to the overall effect for me; rarely was I thinking, Oh I remember him from some other movie or TV show. I did feel it dragged on at the end, getting perhaps overly sentimental with certain aspects. But still, I liked it overall. And the photo sequence that ran during the credits that was capped off by a film shot from the memorial on Iwo Jima today was a fitting touch to end on.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Flags of our fathers
Added 8/28/2009
The movie helped personalize the fight of the generation that went before me. My father was a career man in the army and fought in WWII and the Korean War. Clint Eastwood did a wonderful thing by making this movie and the companion film, Letters from Iwo Jima. Both entertaining, informative, and insightful.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
The Cliche Holds True
Added 8/24/2009
More than ever... the Book is Far Better than the movie. The movie was a bit disjointed and didn't really delve into some of what made these men tick. The complexities associated with feelings experienced by the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, survived and then went on a war bond tour cannot be done justice on film. Too much detail is missed.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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