The Burden of Heroes

Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers adapts James Bradley and Ron Powers' book recounting the story of the three survivors of the flag raising on Iwo Jima during World War II. The event produced the most famous photographic image of the war, and the men were returned home to lead a war-bond tour, during which they were heroically--and, in their view, erroneously--lionized. Almost simultaneously with Flags, Eastwood, 76, made another film, Letters from Iwo Jima, that tells the story of the battle from the Japanese point of view. To be released Feb. 9, it's a horrifying account of men forced into a suicidal defense of the island by an imperial state. Its leading figures are two soldiers who question such fanaticism. The two films constitute a meditation on the nature of heroism, and the director sat down with TIME's Richard Schickel (a longtime friend) to reflect further on the topic.

What drew you to the book?

To begin with, I just liked the idea of telling a kind of detective story where the son finds out about his father after he passed away. The father didn't want to talk about the war. I was reading his last interview the other night, and the reporter was asking him tough questions, but the father just kind of said, "Oh, I don't want to comment on that." It gave you a good picture of what kind of man he must have been--very reserved. He didn't want to revisit the flag raising, much less the war.

But obviously the son knew he was one of the six guys who raised the flag?

Sure, he knew that. That's the start of the whole story. Why did this man seek anonymity to such a great degree even with his own family? Here is a man who won the Navy Cross--the second highest decoration you can get--but they didn't even know he'd won it until after he died.

When you read the book the first time, did you start thinking of what constitutes heroism and what doesn't?

Yeah, I did. The thing that I liked about it is there were no stories of people bashing down walls and running through doors. It was just the common man--skinny kids out of the Depression getting out of high school and going right into the war. And then getting into battle that just was more than they could fathom. Their average age was 19. What that must have done to the brain of a young kid. And then going home--but not normally, like most kids. The government put them out on this war-bond drive. They came back to a million people at Times Square and climbing these papier-mâché mountains, all this Hollywood kind of stuff. In fact, we're talking about the propaganda machine. The propaganda machine is our subject matter.

That's to me the most interesting aspect of the movie. These were just six guys who were standing around with a pipe and a flag.

And you don't see their faces. You could put anybody on those papier-mâché mountains and say, "These are the guys who raised the flag." Who was to know?

Does the very anonymity of Joe Rosenthal's photo make them seem more heroic?

Rosenthal always claimed that if he'd composed it, he would have ruined it, because he would have said, "I can't see your faces." It symbolized the whole country being heroic rather than an individual Medal of Honor winner.

Isn't the essence of heroism--as we understand it in the U.S., at least--dutifulness?

I think so.