FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS

The establishing shot of the movie is a very strong shot: feet running, the face, a 360 degree camera shot of the battlefield around and through all this someone crying ‘corpsman’. It a very strong scene of war. He puts across the message that a war is going on the introduced character is a corpsman is desperately searching for the crying voice.

Clint has also played with colour. While in the scenes on Iwo Jima are very dull coloured, the scenes back in America are colourful.

The movie is very non-linear, following a variety of timelines. The transitions of from these timelines are very interesting. In the beginning we see a extreme close up of John Bradley as tears start rolling down his eyes that flashes into the present old John Bradley. Then there is another one where John Bradley is getting is climbing up a fake Iwo Jima for a fund raiser, and the camera begins to close up on his face, there are flashes streaking across his face and the flash he is back in Iwo Jima. In this particular scene it happens for Iggy and John quite often.

I like the use of handheld camera, which enables the viewers to join the intensity of the soldiers. There are some nice shot where the soldiers land on Iwo Jima and the water is splashing all over.

Another scene I like is when the soldiers arrive on Iwo Jima and then we have a variety of point of perspective shots of Japanese soldier as they are getting ready to attack. After this there is montage of all these guns going off and attacking. Clint has really put it well together.

The scene where Bradley finds Iggy is awesome and this is simply because of the lighting. Bradley enters a cave like room, the only source of light is the from the entrance. He enters it, it’s a medium shout. His face goes into the darkness. Then his face gets lit for a few for a few seconds. The pain his shown. The darkness reappears and he walks out. There is a low key lighting. Clint does not show Iggy’s corpse and leave that to the imagination of the audience.

The ending scene is very beautiful. With the narration going over the, it starts off with a medium angle shot, and we have the introduction of the soldiers. We have a variety of shots as they undress and jump into the water, angle shot, medium shot of the soldiers faces, point of perspective shot and the final shot when John Bradley jumps into the water, a birds eye view.