Symbols: Reflections On The Movie "Flags of Our Fathers"

My friend Joel is far more qualified to review and analyze movies than I but  a few things really hit me when I watched it last night.  ( I know, I am a cheapskate ... I wait for the DVD release before I watch these things.)

The central idea of the movie, to me, is the power of symbols.  You cannot divorce the impact of the photograph of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima from the culture of that time.  It might not have even made the front page in today's culture, but it was exactly right for that time and place.  It communicated a message that the American nation needed to hear if the will to prosecute the war was to be reinforced and perpetuated.

Thinking about this raised a couple further thoughts.

First - if the movie is accurate and I am not certain that it is - the American will to support the war was faltering at the time.  War weariness had settled in and a crisis in funding had developed.  According to one character the United States had reached its credit limit and there was actual talk of negotiating an end of hostilities with Japan.  I do not know this to be true but if so I wonder if there is ever any cause that a people are willing to prosecute to the absolute limits of their capacity  or do all causes naturally reach a point where "weariness" overrides conviction?

If any war ever needed to be fought, the war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan needed fighting.  It is hard for me to understand how any individual could rationalize "backing off" from the war until all possible resources were expended in pursuing it.  The same general situation arose in 1863-4 during the War Between the States.  There was serious concern that Lincoln would not be re-elected and a "peace" candidate would be.  In that circumstance the general military leadership of the Union forces had not been sterling and there were genuine concerns about whether victory was possible, but Lincoln knew that the real problem was moral.  He shifted the primary appeal for unity to the moral ground of emancipation and away from primarily pragmatic issue of preserving the Union. 

In both cases though, the American will to fight wavered as the horrors of war pressed upon their consciousness and their pocket book.  It causes me to wonder if the general population can ever be fully and finally motivated by abstract principle, say - by the idea of justice.

Second, that's where the power of symbols comes in.  Symbols move people in ways that abstractions cannot. 

The "symbol" of the defense of the Alamo far outweighed its military or strategic significance.  It became the rallying cry of Texans and the answer to every question about that war's legitimacy. 

Lincoln shifted the focus of his war to they symbols of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the rallying song "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".  He appealed to the sympathies of people though the images of burdened and mistreated slaves.  Though not as successful as other symbols, in that time it was successful enough.

The symbol of the Marines raising the flag in Iwo Jima, in some unexplainable way, communicated to the American people that their nation and that war were worth supporting. The symbol of a young Vietnamese girl running naked down a road as the world erupted in flames behind her communicated an entirely different message to a later generation.

To me, the picture of an Iraqi woman, holding up her purple thumb should been such a symbol in our current situation.  In her eyes you could see restored pride, restored dignity, restored sense of purpose.   There was a powerful image that flashed on our consciousness for a moment but was then allowed to die. There has been no such effort expended on symbolizing this war in a positive manner as was undertaken with those Marines.  Some of this is because the government does not have nearly the control of the media as it did then but that is not the whole of it.  Perhaps the real reason why is that the power of symbols is so much better understood now that a domestic battle over this war has been waged to suppress this symbol and replace it with another.

The picture of the Iraqi woman is almost completely squashed at this point and in its place is the "symbol" of Guantanamo Bay (and others).  Americans have been bombarded with the image of US Troops "mistreating" enemy combatants and civilians.  The strategy is to symbolize the war in the manner of the image in Vietnam rather than the image of WWII.  It is foolish to think that the American military treated Japanese prisoners of war better than we are treating the terrorists we hold now.  American soldiers were incensed by the well documented cruelty of the Japanese and responded (not to the same degree) to it.  But the adopted symbol then was of American valor, of American courage, of American steadfastness, and it was effective.  Today the flood of opinion is being more (and unduly) influenced by the symbols of shame.  It is not a question of whether some shameful things have happened.  This is war.  The question is whether the symbol of shameful things becomes the prevalent image in people's minds. 

When the primary debate shifts from what is the war intended to accomplish to whether or not Halliburton is profiting from it, it  is indicative that one symbol is ascendent over another. (BTW - you want some horror stories about war profiteering - study the history of the American Civil War, during and after.)  People cannot be sustained only by abstractions.  They need symbols.

I suppose to be strictly precise, the battle over symbols is a battle over abstractions.  But abstractions can be debated.  Symbols not so much, and they can be controlled.  I wonder if we can ever really trust them.

Comments

[writing jobs]

I love this movie....I might have cried on this one.

[Joel Loukus]

Let's just chalk it up to an abridgement.

[Gadfly]

all right Joel.... way to go. I will probably never watch a movie the same way again. I have learned something. Thanks

BTW - re: In short, the editing sucks.

Is that technical "insider" language or does it just generally convey a street reaction?

[Joel Loukus]

Alright, alright.

Flags of our Father's editing seems to be heavily influenced by films and shows like 'lost'-- that attempt to unfold their characters across multiple --basically linear-- time frames, at once.

It's engaging because you can always have interesting things going on in the frame to engage the audiance, and there are always fascinating techniques that can be used to cut in between them, things like misdirection (i.e.) they are crawling up a hill, it turns out to be a stadium.

It can be very exciting, but none of this will work without the characters being properly shown--

The reason that lost works so very well, so much so that it's budget and run have been doubled over multiple times, is because it only tackles this multiple-front-edit, one character at a time. We are allowed to experience the relavant emotions for the given character as they re-experience them, and we are given the dramatic highlights; all the most important things.

That was the idea behind the non linear presentation of flags.

The problem: There are three distinct characters being presented, and the flashback content is spread across an entire island of activity.

As a result, the cuts between whichever characters are present in the ongoing timeline, versus the flashback, are, at best, confusing, illogical, arbitrary, and emotionally distance the audiance.

In short, the editing sucks.

[Gadfly]

C'mon Joel..
You can't be a tease like that. Finish the thought!!!!!

[Joel Loukus]

An apt breakdown of the central themes.

Not that this matters to anyone but me, but I would say that, techinically, this film a prime example of how bad editing can ruin a perfectly good film, it's clear that the types of transitions that they were trying to emulat-

You know what, nevermind.