As the explosive drumbeat of war assails your ears, six soldiers stained with the grime of combat and killing struggle up the side of a mountain and, at the top, strain mightily to raise the massive pipe on which they have hung the Stars and Stripes.
Even a passing acquaintance with the Rosenthal picture -- reputedly the most reproduced photograph in the world -- is enough for you to recognise the scene.
That familiarity multiplies the shock value when the camera pulls back and you realise the whole thing is a fake -- a show mounted with the calculated precision of military propagandists and the panache of showbiz.
Clint Eastwood bases Flags of our Fathers on the eponymous non-fiction best-seller that James Bradley wrote in 2000 about his father, Navy corpsman John Bradley.
Bradley and five others -- Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block and Michael Strank -- were the soldiers framed in Rosenthal's picture. Sousley, Block and Strank were among the estimated 6,800 US soldiers who died in the carnage that stained Iwo Jima's black, volcanic soil red. The three who survived were brought back to the US and pressed into service to raise funds for the war effort.
In the spring of 1945, the incident was re-enacted at Chicago's Soldier Field, with Bradley, Gagnon and Hayes in full battle regalia clambering up a fake mountain to 'plant the flag' before cheering crowds and crashing fireworks that simulated the sound of battle.
The myth-making has varying impacts on the three men. Bradley and Hayes resist; the former is the calm emotional center of the narrative, contrasting thematically with the latter's descent into instability. Guignon, 19, takes to the circus and sees in it an opportunity to land prize jobs after the war, but the doubts lurk just beneath his ebullient surface.
The script, by Oscar-winner and Eastwood regular Paul Haggis and William Broyles Jr, is carefully constructed, switching back and forth between the relentless ferocity of battle and the follies and fripperies of the star spangled road show back home.
Tom Stern, Eastwood's regular cinematographer is visceral, startlingly brutal, in depicting the horrors of combat and the random cruelty of death; his work is complemented by the pared to the bone editing of Joel Cox.
Acting-wise, the heart of the film is Ryan Phillippe, who produces a finely calibrated performance as the man whose code of honour rebels at the cynical marketting of war. The surprise package is Adam Beach, who is incandescent as the conflicted, tortured Ira Hayes.
Unlike many directors who hit their creative peak early, and then plateau, Eastwood seems to grow in stature from film to film. Here, he shows amazing skill in crafting an uncompromising attack on the hypocrisy of a wartime government, juxtaposed against the bravery and honor of ordinary men making extraordinary sacrifices for flag, and for country.
Also read: Flags Of Our Fathers at the Oscars
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