This Clint Eastwood Double-Feature Shows Two Sides of the Same War

There’s a case for Clint Eastwood being the definitive American filmmaker in modern-day Hollywood. He’s one of the few working directors openly continuing the legacy of such Golden Age icons as John Ford and Howard Hawks, and his extensive filmography has seen him exploring every facet of the American national character. But crucially, Eastwood has never been a blind patriot, and his willingness to critique the foundations of his homeland has long been his greatest talent. It’s this philosophy at the core of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, Eastwood’s 2006 companion films that presented the controversial Battle of Iwo Jima from the American and Japanese viewpoints, respectively.

It’s no surprise that an atypical American director would eventually turn their attention towards the most important event in its history, World War II, but these are not cliché war films that seek to glorify their nation via insipid sensationalism. Instead, Clint Eastwood focuses on the inherent tragedy of warfare, dissecting the fabricated perception of heroism while still making time to commemorate those involved. Eastwood has always been one of the industry’s most compassionate directors, and whether viewed as two separate films or as one unified epic, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima are excellent examples of that.

‘Flags of Our Fathers’ Explores the Repercussions of the Iconic Iwo Jima Photograph

If there’s one image everyone can recognize from Iwo Jima, it’s the photograph of six United States Marines raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi. It’s an immensely powerful shot, and personifies the mythical idea that America is the embodiment of independence, freedom, and optimism (no wonder it has become a cultural milestone). It’s also an image that is very misleading. The flag was raised on the fifth day of fighting, long before the Americans claimed victory thirty-one days later, and it wasn’t even the original. The first flag had been raised earlier that morning, but was taken down after the Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, decided he wanted it as a souvenir. It’s ironic that the replacement flag – which was carried up Mount Suribachi and raised by six disgruntled soldiers who were largely indifferent to the whole endeavor – was the one that achieved immortal status, while the one that warmed the hearts of those blood-covered soldiers at the time has been forgotten by history. If ever did something encapsulate the dichotomy of how a nation treats its soldiers, it would be that.

These hidden truths play a central role in our first film, Flags of Our Fathers. At the film’s core are Marine Private First Class Ira Hayes (Adam Beach), Private First-Class Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), and Navy Pharmacist’s Mate 2nd Class John “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), the three flag raisers who survived Iwo Jima (although subsequent investigations have now concluded that the latter two were misidentifications of Harold Keller and Harold Schultz, respectively). Before the bodies of their fallen comrades are even cold, these ordained heroes find themselves shipped home to be celebrated as the ultimate beacons of hope during these trying days… and then promptly weaponized by their government to aid the fledgling war bond drive that’s the only thing keeping the military afloat. It’s a remarkably cynical premise, dispelling with and then attacking the romanticized notion of patriotism that the American propaganda machines parrot to an ignorant (perhaps purposefully) audience. These men don’t fight for their country, but “for the man in front [and] for the man beside him.” That’s the truth, but the government isn’t about to let that become public knowledge.

Untethering these men from one frozen moment is at primary goal of Flags of Our Fathers. Eastwood’s characteristically muted direction is the ideal match for this subject matter, allowing voices that had previously been trapped behind the façade of “duty” and “responsibility” to speak unobstructed. Hayes is the most tragic figure, shunned by the same society he is expected to bleed and die for simply because he isn’t white. He resents his fame and detests the crusade of lies he is expected to spout, leading to a dependence on alcohol that contributes to his death ten years later. Beach captures his sadness flawlessly, demonstrating the heavy toll that fame can bring – especially for someone who finds it thrust upon them so unwantedly. Eastwood has always shown an interest in humanizing venerated icons – a topic he continues to explore with underrated films like Sully and The 15:17 to Paris – and the empathetic direction of Flags of Our Fathers makes it one of his more successful examples.

‘Letters From Iwo Jima’ Is About the Meaningless of War

In this regard, Letters from Iwo Jima picks up right where its older sibling ended, albeit while ditching that film’s lavish production values for a decidedly more intimate experience that strands the viewer right alongside Iwo Jima’s doomed inhabitants. The reason for this is tragically simple – because so few of them survived. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers stationed on the island, only 216 would be taken prisoner, the rest either missing in action or dead (often by their own hands). It’s a horrendous statistic that speaks volumes about the brutality of war, and it’s also one that was painfully inevitable. The Japanese may have had the tactical advantage, but the overwhelming superiority of their opponent meant only the Americans would emerge victorious, leading to one of the most pointless battles of the war. This sense of impending defeat underpins everything in Letters from Iwo Jima, resulting in one of the most nihilistic depictions of warfare in cinematic history. The iconic flag from its predecessor makes only a brief appearance, but its shadow looms large over every gruesome minute.

Letters from Iwo Jima is an unrelenting ordeal. The characters we meet are not heroes – they’re scared little boys who spend their days writing letters they know their intended recipients will never read. All of them, generals and foot soldiers alike, know they will die – the only question is whether they will do so with honor (a nebulous term that, despite its positive connotations, is arguably the cause of all their problems). The film’s guiding light, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), may exude the confidence of a classic wild west sheriff, but he’s under no confusion about his job. He’s not there to save Iwo Jima, he’s there to lose it more slowly, and his commitment to doing that whilst trying in vain to keep casualties to a minimum makes him easy to root for. At the other end of the spectrum, we have Private First Class Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a fictitious character whose universality makes him an effective representation of the thousands of Japanese soldiers who died at the behest of their unseen masters. In general, Letters from Iwo Jima does a commendable job of remaining authentic, and Eastwood deserves high praise for having the courage to present everything in Japanese (making it one of the few American-produced films not in the English language).

Clint Eastwood has never been known as the most ostentatious director, but Letters from Iwo Jima displays some of his most overt stylistic choices. For starters, his version of Iwo Jima is truly apocalyptic, full of ravaged landscapes and sinister labyrinths where the ghosts of the fallen continue to reside even in the modern-day prologue. It makes for an ugly aesthetic that – when combined with the intense sound design and muted color palette (the consequence of cinematographer Tom Stern desaturating the image so much that it practically turns black and white) – makes for a difficult film to sit through, even for those who admire its core tenets. A casual moviegoer might seek enjoyment in the Saving Private Ryan-inspired battle sequences (no doubt the result of having Steven Spielberg in the producer chair), but the fatalistic context Eastwood presents them with rejects the longstanding belief that action translates too vibrantly to cinema to allow for an anti-war film. In Letters from Iwo Jima, violence is not fun – it is the symbol of a nation that has failed its citizens. Never has death seemed so inescapable, and what a damning reality that is.

Why Do ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ and ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ Make a Riveting Double-Feature?

Despite taking place within touching distance of each other, there are no direct overlaps between Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, allowing them to be viewed as standalone pieces. However, it is only when they are seen together that their true power becomes known. A lot of terrible things happen in both films – many of which are committed by the characters we’re supposed to empathize with – but Eastwood never puts the blame on their shoulders. How could he? They’re just people, fighting in a war they barely understand against people they have no cause to hate… but orders are orders, and how is a low-level soldier expected to discern right from wrong when the future of their country is at risk? While Eastwood is willing to critique the nationalist tendencies of each nation, he never goes so far as to mock them, giving the film a baseline of compassion that should be a requirement for all like-minded war films. No one on that battlefield is a villain. They’re just ordinary people doing what they’ve been told is the right thing, and that’s far from the only similarity they have.

The summation of this comes towards the end of Letters from Iwo Jima. A Japanese regiment shoots and captures an American soldier, but guided by a moment of shared humanity, they decide to patch him up. Despite their best efforts, he dies, surrounded by the very people who were nothing more than targets on the other end of his rifle until moments earlier. A lieutenant searches him and finds a letter from his mother, whereupon he reads it aloud to the battle-scarred soldiers nearby. It’s a very mundane letter, containing nothing that the thousands of other letters across Iwo Jima wouldn’t also have included, but that’s the point. Hearing the hopeful words of a mother who just wants her baby to come home safe – a mother who is identical in spirit to everyone else’s on this damnable island – is soul-crushing, and speaks to Eastwood’s driving motivation behind these films. The point he’s making is one that centuries of anti-war stories have already asserted, but the fact that such stories are still being told is exactly why it needs repeating. It’s a powerful scene in isolation, but as the centerpiece in a duology that has spent 272 minutes exploring this exact conceit, it’s absolutely devasting.