Letters From Iwo Jima is Clint Eastwood's second film on the topic this year. I haven't seen Flags of Our Fathers yet, perhaps I would have gotten more out of this if I had. This is a good anti-war film. While not quite up to All Quiet on the Western Front or Paths of Glory, it can be talked about in the same conversation.
Most descriptions would be that Letters From Iwo Jima tells the story of the battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese point of view. While that's true, the battle seems like a MacGuffen to tell the story of soldiers. Yes it's in Japanese and is subtitled.
The film follows a few soldiers telling their backstories and their lives. To tell the story of an average grunt, we follow Kazunari Ninomiya as Saigoa. He was a baker at home who was conscripted and forced to leave his pregant wife. We see him early on, unhappy about digging trenches and saying the Americans can have this useless rock. He and his friends are tired, hungry, and many are suffering from dysentery. This could be any American soldier in any war movie made since Platoon.
Ken Watanabe plays General Kuribayashi and he seems the only officer with any ability for independent thought. Or maybe it's just that he's the only one that knows there are no reinforcements coming. His staff views his plans as idiotic but it's probably because he has only told them the next step and not what the overall plan is. I'm always annoyed when conflict happens merely by lack of communication.
The officers seem more concerned with committing suicide than with killing the enemy or following orders. Some things I think they should know: (1) If you're sneaking up on the enemy in the dark, don't yell just before you get to them; (2) don't run directly across the enemy's line of fire, without cover, while standing up; and perhaps most important (3) when you pull the pin on a grenade, you're supposed to throw it at the enemy, not hold it close to you.
The reviews I've seen are greatly impressed that this film shows the enemy, the Japanese, as humans, who aren't that different from us. Maybe this is new compared to the classic John Wayne WWII movie, but isn't it obvious? The film shows each side treat some prisoners badly and some prisoners humanely, should that really be a surprise? It was (only?) 20 years ago that Sting asked if the Russians love their children too.
If you don't know about the battle you're not going to come away with much more than a few details and certainly not a sense of the timescale. My biggest problem with the film is that you barely see the Japanese fighting. Based on this film you'd think only a handful of Americans died in the battle.
The cinematography by JimaTom Stern is amazing. It's not in black and white but looks like it is. As in his other recent films there's a very noirish look as shadows often cover much of the shot. In this film you get the effect of masses of faceless soldiers that could be anyone.
This is a good film though it is a little slow and ponderous. Early on Kuribayashi spends time walking around the island getting an understand of the land. It gives us the opportunity to see the island as well. Most of the other officers and soldiers thought he was a little crazy but we obviously knew he was figuring out defensive strategies. To avoid his troops thinking he was crazy don't you think he would have mentioned that? Wouldn't it have been nice to see the meeting where he told his officiers in some depth what the plan was? But that's not what the film was about. It was enough to see a WWII film in reverse. The enemy we fought were real people with families and they didn't want to die for their country anymore than our soldiers did, but they (mostly) followed orders, because they really didn't have another choice.
Draw the parallels you want with our present war. I guess that conflict is evidence that not everyone gets the obvious message of this film.
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