The Power Of an Image Drives Film By Eastwood

The Power Of an Image Drives Film By Eastwood Oscar season is only just getting under way, but on Candle Wreathcredentials alone a presumptive front-runner would have to be Clint Eastwood's ''Flags of Our Fathers,'' the World War II epic about the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, which began screening for selected journalists this week in New York.

Mr. Eastwood's last two movies, after all, were ''Mystic River,'' which picked up best picture and best directing nominations in 2004, and ''Million Dollar Baby,'' which won in both categories in 2005. Paul Haggis, who wrote the shooting script for ''Flags of Our Fathers,'' also wrote ''Million Dollar Baby'' and was a co-writer of the Oscar-winning screenplay for last year's best picture, ''Crash.'' To top it off, the movie's producers include Steven Spielberg, whose battlefield decorations include Oscars for ''Saving Private Ryan'' and Emmys for the mini-series ''Band of Brothers.''

Whether ''Flags'' ultimately connects will be up to the audience and Oscar voters. But it is already emerging as a candidate for best back story.

A big, booming spectacle that sprawls across oceans and generations, ''Flags of Our Fathers,'' which opens on Oct. 20, was anything but a simple undertaking. With much of film following the surviving flag raisers as they crisscross the country in the spring and summer of 1945 pitching war bonds for a government in desperate financial straits, it is neither a pure war movie nor, given its sweeping and harrowing combat sequences, merely a wartime drama. It examines the power of a single image to affect not only public opinion but also the outcome of a war, -- whether in 1945, in Vietnam or more recently.

Above all it is a study of the callous ways in which heroes are created for public consumption, used and discarded, all with the news media's willing cooperation. And it is imbued with enough of a critique of American politicians and military brass to invite suspicions that Hollywood is appropriating the iconography of World War II to score contemporary political points. Yet just when it verges on indicting the people responsible for exploiting the troops, the movie comes round to their point of view.

What is more, in a rare and audacious feat of moviemaking and distribution, ''Flags'' was produced back-to-back with a companion film, ''Letters From Iwo Jima,'' also directed by Mr. Eastwood, that is told entirely from the Japanese perspective, and in Japanese. The two movies will be released, a few months apart, by two competing studios and the remnant of a third: Paramount, because it bought DreamWorks SKG last year, Candle Wreathis releasing ''Flags'' domestically, while Warner Brothers is to release ''Letters'' in North America and both films overseas.