Clint Eastwood continues on a path to becoming one of the great American directors with Flags Of Our Fathers, an "intelligent and sincere" WWII drama. Ryan Phillippe heads the ensemble cast as one of the soldiers who famously raised the US flag at The Battle of Iwo Jima. However it was Eastwood's companion piece Letters From Iwo Jima that was favoured on Oscar night.

Writing Letters

Eastwood pays tribute to the men who lost their lives at Iwo Jima in a fitting introduction to this two-disc DVD. In Words On The Page, James Bradley talks about rediscovering his father, John 'Doc' Bradley (played by Phillippe), while researching the book on which the film is based. Doc did not talk about his experiences, so it was left to his son to riffle through old letters and seek out his army buddies following his death. Later on, William Broyles Jr and Paul Haggis explain the challenges they faced in adapting Bradley's book, after Eastwood persuaded producer Steven Spielberg that he could turn it into a great movie.

Phillippe, along with his fellow actors, reflects on the "huge responsibility" of having to play a real-life character in Six Brave Men. Eastwood also chips in regarding the extraordinary pressure the men were put under, in the massive propaganda drive that followed the raising of the flag. "They lived at the high end of celebritydom," says the director, going on to talk about how this exacerbated the effects of post-traumatic stress. For the cast, recreating the flag raising was the most emotional day of the shoot and that's captured in another featurette.

There's more behind-the-scenes footage in a half-hour Making Of featurette, between lots of talk about costumes and weapons design. With Eastwood's emphasis on achieving total authenticity, every detail had to be verified with research. Still, he looks very relaxed on location in Iceland, calling the shots from a sandy hillside (of course the sand was imported) amid bullet strikes and bomb blasts. Those explosions aren't too spectacular, but that's because Eastwood makes a point of not veering into Michael Bay territory.

Post War

Visual effects supervisor Michael Owens has a separate forum to discuss the recreation of the battle with practical and digital effects. He explains that Eastwood's insistence on "photo-realism" was often at odds with his penchant for spontaneity on the set. Comparing raw footage with a finished sequence on Mt Suribachi, it becomes clear how one actor putting a foot out of place could mean weeks of 'rotoscoping' i.e. separating the foreground from a digital background pixel by pixel. Essentially, the action is played out in a "virtual Iwo Jima".

Excerpts from the real Battle Of Iwo Jima (including the raising of the flag) is presented in nearly ten minutes of vintage newsreel. A few of these startling scenes are even presented in colour. It's perhaps the most outstanding feature in this DVD set which is otherwise heavy on earnest reflection and coolly efficient in deconstructing the backstage mechanics.

Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima are also available as part of a box set.

EXTRA FEATURES

Flags Of Our Fathers DVD is released on Monday 9th 2007.