Flags of our Fathers / Letters from Iwo Jima

Plot Outline: The life stories of the six men who raised the flag at The Battle of Iwo Jima, a turning point in WWII.

Flags of Our Fathers is based on a New York Times Bestseller book (year 2000) of the same name and is about a man's quest to learn more about his father, a medical corpsman in WWII at the Battle of Iwo Jima. More than 22,000 Japanese soldiers would die defending a patch of ground a third the size of Manhattan, while nearly 26,000 Americans fell taking it from them. The battle, the largest sea armada invasion ever assembled and the costliest war ever fought by the US Marines,

Based on the best seller: Flags of our Fathers


If you have not read this outstanding book, highly recommed.

Movie website http://www.flagsofourfathers.net/

 

Excellent book. Looking forward to the movie.

 

Well, I went to see this on Tuesday (Halloween) I went to see "Flags of our Fathers". I gotta say, from a man that used to play Dirty Harry, Mr. Eastwood did an amazing job. He took a story that barely anyone has touched on and created a film that, in my opinion, cannot be matched.

One thing I liked about it was the editing. How he (as they say in the movie buisness) "Tarantinoed it", meaning he started at the end, then went to the middle, then back to the end, then the beginning, then the end again, etc...

Also, the "behind the scenes" of the "heros" that raised the flag. What I mean by this is how Ira and Gagnon didn't like eachother. How they put on a show for the world...

Also, I liked the honest potrail of the politics of the US. How heartless and brutal they can be. They took men, men who fought and saw horrible things for the sake of their country, and turned them into spokesmen for War Bonds. Now, I'm not saying that War Bonds weren't a necessary thing back then, because without them the war wouldn't have happened and we'd all be Hailing Hitler right now, so I'm thankful for those men and women that bought the bonds, but the fact that they used War heros to sell them, it made War Bonds out to be a gimic.

Lastly I'd jsut like to say that I'm from Winnipeg. The "Indian" in this movie (Adam Beach) is from here, aswell. I just wanted to make it known that Winnipeg does have some talent in it and that we're more than just a cold spot of nothing. There's also another man from Winnipeg in it, but I can't remember his name!

Anyways, tell me what you thought about the movie!

Cheers,

Justin

 

There's also another man from Winnipeg in it, but I can't remember his name!

Cheers,

Justin

Len Cariou who played Mr Beech.

Welcome to the forum Justin. Look forward to your posts.

 

Thanks for the post Justin and this is a film that I plan to see!

 

I was a little disappointed with the film, which I saw shortly after finishing the book. I thought it harped too much on Ira Hayes being discriminated against, and really lagged during some of the war bond scenes. I'm really looking forward to 'Letters from Iwo Jima' in February though.

 

Hey guys
Well, thanks for your support, however, only one of you actually responded to my question/comment!

But, yes, thanks a lot for rolling out the welcome mat and I look forward to posting my opinions on war and it's horrors!

Cheers,

Justin

P.S. I also look forward to seeing the new one once it comes out! Maybe we can see it together! HA! Just kidding.

 

Is it worth going to see, I still haven't seen it yet and was wondering if it is one I should see/rent at some point?

 

Hey guys
Well, thanks for your support, however, only one of you actually responded to my question/comment!

When I get a chance to see it in Australia, I will give you my opinion!

 

haha, is it not in Aussie yet?
Haha... well, whenever you DO get the chance to see it, I envy you, I'd love to see it again, despite what the other dude says!
So ya, definetly take it in, and I sre hope you enjoy it.

 

Gnomie!
See it see it see it!
I found nothing wrong with the movie. Other than the fact that it seems a little long, however, that may be due to the fact that I saw it at a "Famous Players" movie theatre in which the previews seem to almost outlast the movie itself. But other than that, I found the movie very enlightening and very honest. It doesn't rank up to a movie like "Svaing Private Ryan" or the "Band of Brothers" series... but it is a good movie that you should for sure take in.

Cheers,

Justin

 

Clint Eastwood is a fine director. He also directed "Mystic River", one of his best ever in my opinion. Anyone know when "Flags of our Fathers" is due out in the UK? Anyone seen a trailer on the internet somewhere?

By the way ploop 4444, may I also welcome you on board? Winnipeg - that's in Manitoba, right? Cold at this time of year?

 

Winnipeg is quite cold infact. We have had a couple warmer days lately but, mostly, it's cold!
Any ya, Sunday is the Grey Cup here in Winnipeg (The Superbowl of the Canadian Football League) and ya... that should be exciting. I have tickets and the whole city is vibrant with spirit.
Anyways, Ya, go and see Flags of our Fathers or die... it's that simple.

Cheers,

Justin

 

Okay, anyways, more people talk to me about this movie.
There's this guy I know that watch A LOT of movies and we pretty much have the same opinion when it comes to movies, and I've suggested this movie to him, and I really don't want him to be disappointed.
So ya, tell me what you think and then I'll pass your views onto him.

 

Rather than post this article in the Books and Movies forum, I thought it more appropriate to post it here because of the final few paragraphs:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1975591,00.html

Hollywood resurrects the two sides of Japan's forgotten battle

Clint Eastwood brings bloody 1945 battle to a new global audience
Justin McCurry in Iwo Jima
Wednesday December 20, 2006
Guardian

By the time the guns had fallen silent at the end of one of the bloodiest battles in the history of modern warfare, Iwo Jima resembled the surface of the moon. The trees had been turned into scorched stumps and the hillsides flattened by relentless shelling from US gunboats.Now, almost 62 years after its fall changed the course of the second world war, Iwo Jima's physical scars have healed. Seen from the air, it is a pretty, teardrop-shaped speck in the Pacific Ocean 1,200 miles south of Tokyo, a place of rare insects and wild chilli peppers where the peace is broken only by the roar of Japanese F-15s leaving base.

The base is a reminder of Iwo Jima's vital role in Japan's security. To its Japanese defenders it represented the first line of defence; for the Americans it was the ideal stopping-off point for squadrons of B-29 Superfortresses that would carpet-bomb Tokyo and other Japanese cities into submission in the final months of the war.

When US troops landed on Iwo Jima's south-eastern beaches on February 19 1945, their commanders predicted that the battle would be over in four days. By the time Iwo Jima was secured, five weeks later, 6,800 US soldiers had died and 17,000 were injured. Of the 22,000 Japanese troops defending the island, only 1,080 were captured alive. Those who didn't fight to the death preferred to commit suicide than shame their emperor by falling into enemy hands.

After decades of being treated as an unfortunate episode in a war many would prefer to forget, Iwo Jima has finally penetrated the Japanese consciousness with the release of two films directed by Clint Eastwood.

Flags of Our Fathers, which goes on release in the UK on Friday, flits between graphic fighting scenes and the post-battle lives of three of the six US soldiers who famously raised the Stars and Stripes on the summit of Mt Suribachi on February 23 - a scene immortalised in Joe Rosenthal's iconic black-and-white photograph. Its companion piece is Letters from Iwo Jima, filmed in Japanese and told from the perspective of the island's defenders.

Deathtrap
Of the US soldiers who raised the flag on Mt Suribachi, three died in the fighting and only one of the survivors, John Bradley, whose son James wrote the 2000 bestseller on which Eastwood's English-language film was based, went on to lead anything resembling a normal life.

Today, the soldiers' feat is commemorated by a simple cenotaph on the summit decorated with flowers and dog tags left by visiting US soldiers.

Beyond Suribachi lies the 2½-mile stretch of black sand where the US troops landed, only to be greeted by silence from thousands of Japanese soldiers hiding out in the jungle and the huge network of tunnels and pillboxes carved into Iwo Jima's volcanic earth.

To the west, the hulls of warships can be seen poking through the water. The victorious Americans had filled the vessels with concrete and sunk them to form a breakwater for a harbour that, due to Iwo Jima's constant volcanic activity, was never built.

Inland, the scrubland and jungle hide a honeycomb of tunnels that the Japanese believed would protect them from the American bombardment. In the end they became subterranean deathtraps.
One of the few tunnels open to visitors served as a Japanese navy hospital. Inside, sake bottles rest against the walls and dust-covered drums and baskets sit untouched in a corner. Few of the patients who managed to endure temperatures of up to 50C made it out alive. When the hospital was unearthed in 1984 it contained the mummified remains of 54 Japanese soldiers.

The tunnel system was masterminded by general Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the American-educated commander of the Japanese forces who opposed war with the US and had accepted the futility of trying to resist an invasion long before the first shot was fired.
In a letter to his family before the battle began, Kuribayashi wrote prophetically: "I may not return alive from this assignment." His mission, he believed, was simply to delay Iwo Jima's inevitable fall.

The circumstances surrounding Kuribayashi's death remain a mystery - his body was never found - giving Eastwood artistic licence in the climax of Letters from Iwo Jima, in which Ken Watanabe (of the Tom Cruise film The Last Samurai) plays the general.

Watanabe, who burst into tears when he first set eyes on Iwo Jima, said his involvement in the film had forced him to confront his country's wartime past.

"We had kind of looked away from it," he said after filming had ended. "But we have to look at it and accept the fact that this what our fathers and grandfathers have actually done. Accepting that reality if the first step."

But on Iwo Jima, it is impossible to ignore Kuribayashi's legacy. In the months leading up to the battle his troops built 16 miles of underground tunnels and 5,000 caves and reinforced pillboxes.
Kuribayashi's remains, and those of 13,000 other Japanese soldiers, still lie exactly where they fell. The defence agency conducts intermittent searches for bones, which are kept locked in a storehouse before being flown to the mainland for burial at Chidorigafuchi cemetery in Tokyo.
The families of the dead regard Iwo Jima as sacred ground, as Eastwood discovered when he had to enter delicate negotiations with politicians and veterans' groups before being given permission to film.

These days, the only human inhabitants are 400 members of the Japanese maritime self-defence force and defence agency bureaucrats. On leaving the island after a tour of duty these personnel make sure to scrape the dirt from the soles of their boots for fear that they will take the souls of their fallen comrades back to the mainland.

Legacy
As journalists prepared to board the flight back to Tokyo, Hiroyuki Iguchi of the defence agency's public information division urged those who had collected stones from Suribachi's summit not to take them home. "You will be haunted by the ghosts of Japanese soldiers."

The island is accessible only by military aircraft, and the only civilians to have set foot on it are the relatives of soldiers who died there.

Until now, few Japanese below a certain age had ever heard of Iwo Jima, let alone its tragic history. Eastwood, who has won praise in Japan for his sensitive portrayal of the battle, agrees with his leading man that, six decades on, it is time to talk openly about the tiny island whose fate determined the course of Japan's modern history.

"None of my Japanese actors knew anything about Iwo Jima," the director said on a recent visit to Tokyo. "You lose 21,000 people! To just ignore them ... what would happen if we did that?"

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

 

I have the book, the movies been out here... for a little more than a month but havent seen it.

 

I'm going to see it when it comes out.

 

I hope to see it over the Christmas - New Year break.

 

What i found interesting about the article was the final "Legacy" paragraphs - I was going to post it in the "should x, y or z apologise" thread, (but it's fallen into a farcical arguement) I thought people would be interested in what the defence agency's public information rep had to say.