November 5, 2006

For two weeks now, people have asked me for my opinion of Clint Eastwood's new film, Flags of Our Fathers, given its thematic parallels with the last chapter of my book. Eastwood's film, based on the superb book of the same name, by James Bradley and Ron Powers, examines how the wartime exploitation of a picture (photojournalist Joe Rosenthal's iconic shot of six men raising the American flag at Iwo Jima in 1945) upended the lives of the subjects within the photographic frame. In much the same way, Watching the World Change reveals for the first time how the wartime exploitation of a picture (photojournalist Thomas Franklin's iconic shot of three men raising the American flag at Ground Zero on 9/11) upended the lives of the subjects within the photographic frame.

Last night, I finally saw the movie and admit to being underwhelmed and disappointed. Yes, the film has perfect-pitch battle scenes, rendered in a nightmarish, slate-gray cast; the washed-out color and claustrophobic camerawork compress each moment of combat and carnage into its own private funnel of hallucination. The film has truly epic and breath-taking panoramas in which massive naval fleets are arrayed across the big screen as never before in cinematic history. And, best of all, the film has an inspired and inspirational sequence showing America's jubilation on that morning in 1945 when a single photograph at a key juncture in the final months of the Pacific campaign--carried from the battlefield to the darkroom to newsrooms and front pages around the world--aroused and rallied a nation long fatigued by the horrors and deprivations of the war.

But in the end what makes Bradley and Powers' book so effective is precisely what dooms the movie. It buckles under the weight of too much minutae, too many flashbacks (caution: this film induces flashback whiplash), and too many indistinguishable characters. Had Eastwood fully fleshed out the lives of the three surviving flag-raisers he might have given the film the critical mass it required to sustain a compelling narrative. Instead, we are introduced to protagonists who lack dimension. Eastwood may win many battles (best special effects, best art direction, best sound mixing) but he loses the war--and the audience. (That said, two out of three ain't bad. His last two directing efforts--Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby--were cinematic triumphs of the first order.)

One niggling point, for me: no distinction is made between Rosenthal's photo and the crude illustration that soon supplanted it, which is displayed on screen throughout the second half of the film. In fact, Rosenthal's image, as the centerpiece of the 1945 bond drive (which raised unprecedented billions for the war effort), was re-cast as a painting and plastered on posters across the land. Soon, it was the illustration, not the photo, that became embedded in the nation's subconscious. So be it. That's how the life of the image played out across the culture 60 years ago. But that still doesn't excuse the screenwriters, who have President Truman say, upon greeting the flag-raisers in the Oval Office, "Let's look at the picture"--and then usher them toward the illustration, not the photograph. (I guess this embrace of the artifice--this substitution of the graphic for the photographic--is partly the point. But that point is made so subtly it seems inadvertent and unintended by the filmmakers.)

One review worth sharing is by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Hume Kennerly, who says in this month's Popular Photographer and American Photo that he feels Rosenthal was given short shrift in the movie. Writes Kennerly, in part:

"Joe's camera-toting character comes across as some kind of accidental tourist who has just blundered off of an amphibious landing craft into one of the biggest battles of all time. In fact Rosenthal, a veteran of five Pacific campaigns, was among the first to hit the beach with the Marines when they went ashore a few days earlier. In [Bradley and Powers's] book...Rosenthal is quoted as saying that enemy fire during the initial landing was so intense that, 'not getting hit was like running through rain and not getting wet.' Joe not only made the initial landing, but had to fight his way out to the command ship at the end of each day to deliver his film for shipment to Guam where it was processed."