The heroes in flags of our fathers for all the right reasons

The Heroes in Flags of Our Fathers for All the Right Reasons
Based on the novel by James Bradley and Ron Powers, the film Flags of Our Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood, narrates, by the constant use of flashbacks, a story built around an event that is anecdotal in the beginning: the making of the famous photo of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi on the island of IwoJima. The film exposes how the picture was reproduced by hundreds of U.S. newspapers at a time when funds for continuing the war were exhausted and the government even toying with the possibility of putting an end to its intervention in the conflict, and tells at the same time how the sentimental and moral effect produced by the image in the minds of hundreds of thousands of citizens was used by thegovernment to launch an extensive advertising and image campaign designed to raise funds by the selling of war bonds. The film tells, as first glance, another one of those battles of World War II, but focuses more deeply on the human side of battle and on the consequences the war gave to the United States, politically and socially. Although the movie, Flags of Our Fathers, poses more questionsthan answers, the film strongly argues that a hero is something humans by nature create to maintain things simple and stay comfortable, and that the media and government may take advantage of this fact to feed from the peoples’ illusions and achieve their objectives. They create the heroes that everyone wants, but the real “flags” the soldiers fight and die for in battle is not really the flag thatis attached to their uniform.

So until here one would be nothing less than in front of an epic story built on the heroism of the Marines on Iwo Jima, but to Eastwood, this story does not matter too much or too little. What matters to the veteran filmmaker's story, is that none of the soldiers used by the government for funds and continue the war actually raised the banner, none captured thehill plagued by Japanese and helped lift the huge flag as an unequivocal symbol of victory and conquest. All the soldiers who did fell in battle before the image got to be famous around world. The three protagonist soldiers of the film did hoist an American flag in the same place, but it was a second flag, a flag that was raised to the skies of an already conquered land and without any danger leadingto a second picture that would serve to endorse the legend. The first flag was replaced by a second so it could serve as a decorative element in the private room of a senior politician or high ranked military of Washington. Therefore, the issue that catches the attention is that the legend, the myth, is often built on a falsehood, but once implemented by the various interests that may come intoplay, and once released by the media to the masses, always prone to cheer the sensational, which will trigger tears or enthusiasm within society, nothing can be done.
But Flags of Our Fathers goes even further, because as well as denouncing with powerful elegance and serenity, that is, without resorting to impudence or partisan demagoguery, the manipulation that carries out the power with history,seeking various benefits and conducting with tricks the people that are governed, as well as subtly introducing throughout the narrative of the film elements such as racism, the immoral stupidity of those who make decisions that affect others without thinking of them and those who are able to cheat without even blinking, and the prevaricator force of marketing and publicity; well, again, Eastwoodconcludes at the end of his work that in the end there is no matter in who raised the flag, who came first to the hill, or who was indeed in the famous photo (in which, incidentally, no one can be distinguished), for they were all heroes.
And they were not because they fought hard for their country and the ideals it represents or supports, they were not because they were willing to sacrifice...