Letters from Iwo Jima
Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima was originally conceived as a companion piece to Flags of our Fathers, designed to show the battle from the point of view of the Japanese. It was expected to be a relatively minor work, and that Flags of our Fathers would overshadow it. But it was Letters from Iwo Jima that got the unanimous critical acclaim and Best Picture nomination. Not only is it the superior picture by far, but it also has the potential to be regarded by future generations as highly as All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, Das Boot and other classic war films.
Where Flags of our Fathers was sprawling and incoherent, Letters from Iwo Jima is tight and focused. Unlike its predecessor’s insights into the nature of heroism which weren’t all that remarkable, Iwo Jima is by contrast profound, understated, meditative, melancholy and moving. Its unique strength is in the way it doesn’t conform to war film cliché, and refuses to paint the Japanese as the stereotypes viewers have seen in countless other works.
It is this very strength that has been attacked by some sections of the US right-wing press (some of them unfortunately Christians), accusing the film of being historically revisionist and anti-American. But the point made by Letters from Iwo Jima and less effectively by Flags of our Fathers, is that there is good and bad on both sides in any war, and regardless of how noble the cause may be war is always hell. Scenes of Americans shooting surrendering Japanese because they are too inconvenient to guard may have ruffled a few feathers across the pond, but sometimes this was what happened.
The performances are all beautifully understated. Ken Watanabe in particular is splendid as the essentially decent General Kuribayashi, whose unorthodox strategy to dig tunnels deep within the island meant the Japanese were able to hold out far longer than they would had they dug their trenches on the beach. Kuribayashi is vilified by some of his men as an American sympathiser, because he had spent time in the US prior to the war, and because he refuses to order his men to kill themselves when all is lost.
Equally good if not better is Kazunari Ninomiya as Saigo, a baker who has been conscripted but desperately wants return to his wife and the daughter he has never seen. Ryo Kase also provides fine support as ex-military policeman Shimizu, as does Tsuyoshi Ihara in his role as Baron Nishi, a former champion at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Ihara has a key scene where he treats a wounded American soldier, the outcome of which is both heartbreaking and morally profound in the way it underlines the entire point of the film. Both Japanese and American soldiers have mothers who write letters encouraging their sons to “do what is right, because it is right” and that is what both sides believed they were doing.
However, despite showing their humanity, Eastwood does not flinch from depicting the patriotic code of honour that caused countless Japanese to commit suicide rather than surrender. One particularly grisly sequence where soldiers in a cave blow themselves up with hand grenades neatly links in with a scene from Flags of our Fathers where the remains of the same soldiers are discovered by American troops. Speaking of which, it hardly needs to be said that this is a graphically violent film, but none of the blood and gore is gratuitous.
Clint Eastwood once again demonstrates his superlative old-school skills as a director. His straightforward, no-nonsense approach is always a breath of fresh air in a market saturated by “attention-span-of-a-goldfish” pacing and whiplash MTV 18-frame cut editing. By allowing the audience time to get to know the characters in the leisurely opening section, the subsequent tragic vignettes within the battle are all the more poignant. The battle scenes themselves, although effective, are relatively brief and the film is all the better for it. Instead of opting for endless spectacular visuals, Eastwood concentrates on his character’s individual stories, punctuated by the occasional brief but well-deployed flashback.
Iris Yamashita and Crash writer/director Paul Haggis provide an excellent spare screenplay, based on Tadamichi Kuribayashi’s book of transcripts from a cache of letters written by Japanese soldiers that was recently found buried on Iwo Jima. Cinematographer Tom Stern gives the film a dark, stylish look with appropriately muted colours (a war film convention ever since Saving Private Ryan). Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens provide the film’s minimal but effective music score.
Ultimately, this is a superb, dramatically satisfying but quietly devastating film. The humanity of the characters resonates deeply as they joke, tell stories, and fight what they know is a hopeless battle. There is a profound sense of loss as each goes to his inevitable death and as I’ve already said, this is a war film that could one day be regarded as a classic. Please don’t be put off by the Japanese subtitles, go and see it.
Simon Dillon, March 2007.
