Letters From Iwo Jima Review
Posted By admin On 16/04/19We completely loved it. We were moved and stirred with many emotions including anger, anger over the horrors of war. We actually liked it better than 'Flags of our Fathers'. The movie was in Japanese and, as near as we could tell, Japanese appears to be the native language of the film. There were brief moments of English, American solders talking, one flash back scene before the war during a foreign dignitary dinner, and of course the credits at the end. The movie would have to be translated and/or sub titled to English in order to have half a chance in the US. Frankly, I think translation would take away from the movie's beauty and meaning. I understand a limited amount of Japanese so I could follow most of the story. The theater was very big and packed. I was a little uncomfortable at first; I may well have been the only American in the place. My wife (who is Japanese) and I sat next to an older couple. At several points during the film, I thought I noticed the man from the couple crying. When the film ended, my wife talked with the couple and learned that the old man's father died in Iwo jima. Later during the trip, speaking with Japanese friends and seeing the Japanese news, stories of lost loved ones from the war were common and this movie for the Japanese people has brought many of these memories out in the open.
To the Japanese, Iwo jima was a part of their homeland where a foreign invader was going to land and begin its invasion on Japanese soil. Throughout all of recorded Japanese history, never had a foreign invader prevailed in war against the Japanese on Japanese land. The imperial Japanese government of that time used this when they sent fighters to Iwo jima. These fighters were to ordered to 'fight to the death' defending their country. That to loose and not die fighting would bring disgrace to self and family. They knew that America was planning to send an overwhelming force and they knew that they were being sent to die. For Americans, Iwo jima was just another far away place and different point in time where American boys were sent and where, unfortunately, some lives were lost fighting for freedom. My god, have we become that blasé about the wars our sons and daughters are being sent to fight in? My wife and I are unique, not typical American movie goers. I'm American, my wife is Japanese. Together, we've visited and cried together at the A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima, and again at the Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. I have relatives who fought in the Pacific, she also has family who fought in the war and who lived in Hroshima. I have two sons now serving in the US Marines. Together my wife and I watched and enjoyed both movies. The movies really didn't bring anything new, historically, to us about Iwo jima. But, the movies did do an excellent job reminding us that the ones who pay the price for war are normal everyday people. People who really don't understand the reasons or the politics behind why they are being sent to die. People who live, love, and are loved by family and friends. People with dreams and ambitions. But, for some reason when called by the leaders of the time, they go forward, obey orders, and do their duty. Sometimes, paying the ultimate price.
I've grown up with Clint Eastwood and it has been a wonderful entertaining journey. These two movies are, in my opinion, his best. Not because of the action, or the drama, or any of the other things that Clint Eastwood is known for, but because he's given us two interlinked stories about the affects of war on the people who are called to pay the ultimate price people like you and me. We may be from different cultures, eat different food, speak different languages, prey to God differently, but we all have things in common. We all live, love, want to be loved, and we dream about and long for peace. And, sometimes we are called to serve and pay for the opportunity. Thank you Clint.
Elegant and sad, Letters from Iwo Jima is a war movie about loss. Director Eastwood conceived it as a companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, and it is at once a more finely focused and more profound film, with violence that can never answer the questions raised by its long moments of anticipation. “Letters,” which observes the lives and deaths of Japanese soldiers in the battle for Iwo Jima, similarly adheres to some of the conventions of the genre even as it quietly dismantles them.
Story Highlights
• CNN.com's Tom Charity: New Eastwood film 'a masterpiece'• 'Letters From Iwo Jima' tells battle story from Japanese POV
• Film has strong performances, steady, reflective direction
(CNN) -- There aren't many examples of war films made from the vantage point of 'the enemy,' but perhaps there should be more.
Orson Welles told Sam Peckinpah that 'Cross of Iron' (Peckinpah's 1977 film about Germans on World War II's Eastern Front) was the best antiwar film he had ever seen, and Lewis Milestone's 1930 best picture winner, 'All Quiet on the Western Front,' still holds up.
Clint Eastwood's reverse angle on the brutal battle for Iwo Jima is a remarkable companion piece to 'Flags of Our Fathers,' and the better of the two films. It is also the only American movie of the year I won't hesitate to call a masterpiece.
Shot almost entirely in Japanese, and even more monochromatic than its predecessor, the film has a more linear trajectory than 'Flags,' only leaving the barren Pacific island for a handful of brief flashbacks when a soldier swaps his rifle for a pen and reminisces to loved ones he never expects to see again.
The device is a good one, permitting Eastwood to strike the same rueful, reflective key he found in 'Unforgiven,' 'Bridges of Madison County' and 'Million Dollar Baby,' even in the midst of nightmarish combat scenes. It also allows us access to fears and sentiments proud Japanese soldiers would be unlikely to express aloud. Indeed, the first time we see Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), he is beaten by an officer for a casual defeatist remark.
Saigo's fatalism is more honest than that of the Imperial High Command, which neglects to advise General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) that the naval fleet has been destroyed and with it any hopes for victory. In any case, the general realizes that the best he can do is delay the Americans for as long as possible.
He orders miles of tunnels to be dug out of the island's volcanic rock, and draws up plans to consolidate his beleaguered forces through a series of strategic withdrawals. The plans outrage his subordinates, indoctrinated in Bushido ('way of the warrior'): death before dishonor.
None of the four characters we get to know best in Iris Yamashita's screenplay share this crazed militaristic mindset, but even the two relatively enlightened officers, Kuribayashi and Lt. Col Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) cannot break free from its bonds. Ken Watanabe makes the general a shrewd and charismatic leader, but if the film has a hero, it's Saigo, the least conventionally heroic of the lot. He's an infantryman who still thinks of himself as a baker, and who is at greater risk from his own army's suicidal zeal than the American onslaught.
In a pivotal sequence, Nishi -- a horseman who competed in the Los Angeles Olympics of 1932 -- orders his medic to treat a mortally wounded American GI with what remains of their morphine. Later he translates a letter from the dead man's mother for the benefit of his men. They are surprised and touched by its simple, heartfelt sentiments, and what they reveal of the enemy their rulers have systematically demonized: 'Come home safe; do the right thing because it is right ...,' she writes.
'My mother said the same things to me,' Shimizu (Ryo Kase), a disgraced military policeman, admits to Saigo. He deserts, but in the midst of battle, even surrender is dangerous. He sits, oblivious, with another POW, while two GIs callously decide their fate over a smoke.
The Pacific campaign was tremendously hard-fought, culminating in the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Twenty-one thousand Japanese troops died in the intense fighting on Iwo Jima, a volcanic island a mere eight square miles in area.
Eastwood's spare, fluid, eloquent movie shows atrocities on both sides, squarely attributes the worst of these to Japan's military-Imperial dictatorship, and gently sifts the black sands of Iwo Jima for moments of solace, grace and mercy.
'Letters From Iwo Jima' runs 141 minutes and is rated R. For Entertainment Weekly's take, click here.
Clint Eastwood Iwo Jima Movie
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