http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15264215/site/newsweek/Oct. 23, 2006 issue - Clint Eastwood's tough, smart, achingly sad "Flags of Our Fathers" is about three anointed heroes of World War II—three of the men who appeared, backs to the camera, in the legendary Joe Rosenthal photograph of six soldiers hoisting the American flag on Iwo Jima. It was an image that electrified a nation at war. The military wanted these men to be larger than life to raise desperately needed money for the war effort by selling war bonds.
It was all for a good cause, but it was pure PR, and it ate away at the insides of these media-proclaimed heroes, who believed that the men who deserved the glory were the ones who had given their lives.
Watching Eastwood's harrowing film, which raises pointed questions about how heroes, and wars, are packaged and sold, it's hard not to think his movie is a commentary on today. Images of Jessica Lynch pop into your brain. And when Sgt. Mike Strank (Barry Pepper), the unit's leader, is killed by friendly fire, your thoughts turn to Pat Tillman, the ex-football star whose death was initially rewritten to suit the mythical role the military, and the media, had decided he must play.
Eastwood wasn't thinking about Lynch when he re-created Iwo Jima's brutal battles on the black sands of Iceland, but he acknowledges the aptness of the analogy. "That poor girl. She was just a teenager. The military and their publicity people decided she had to be Wonder Woman, gunning down tons of people with her machine gun, when she didn't fire a shot. They desperately wanted her to be that."
Eastwood, the former Republican mayor of Carmel, Calif., is no dove, but he does question the premise behind the American undertaking in the Middle East. "I'm not one of those idealistic people who think democracy has to be for everyone," he says. "That's naive on our part. I don't know if they want democracy."
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