LETTERS ENTERTAIN YOU…
I went to see Letters From Iwo Jima on Monday. The film is the second in Clint Eastwood’s duo of films about the pivotal World War II battle. The first was Flags of Our Fathers, which looked at the truth behind the legend of the US soldiers hoisting the American flag on the island. Letters From Iwo Jima takes a look at the battle from the Japanese viewpoint, something that’s been done before in Tora! Tora! Tora!, but Eastwood invests the film with a lot more emotional depth than previous efforts. Also, the film is in Japanese with subtitles, a brave move since it could create a barrier between the movie and its predominantly English-speaking audience. The structure of the film is more linear than Flags and as a result, it has come under fire for lacking the cinematic sophistication of its companion. For me, the tight focus of the film on the battle lends it a cohesiveness that could be argued is slightly lacking in Flags. Like that film, Letters From Iwo Jima has at its heart three main protagonists, all with slightly varying perspectives: grunt Saigo, a simple baker turned soldier, Baron Nishi, a former Olympic equestrian champion and Lt General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. The two standout members of the cast are Tsuyoshi Ihara, who plays the Baron, and Ken Watanabe, on screen here as the Lt General. They bring humanity and sympathy to their respective roles and despite the fact that the audience is aware of the battle’s outcome, you begin to hope that these two remarkable men escape the fate of many of their other battlefield comrades. There are moments which are truly gruesome in the film (one particular scene explains another scene in Flags of Our Fathers) but Eastwood manages to humanise the Japanese, showing a General keen for victory but not at the expense of his soldiers and an officer with real heart. It has also been criticised for being overly revisionist and letting the pendulum swing too far the other way in its portrayal of the Japanese soldiers. There have obviously been well documented atrocities that were carried out by the Japanese against the Allies. But I don’t think that is a strong enough criticism to take away the impressive achievement here: Eastwood, at the age of 77, has set himself the monumental task of portraying an important World War II battle from both sides and, while Letters is a little overlong, you can’t help but admire the ambition of this director. Letters From Iwo Jima is a great achievement and both films display a director of rare talent. But he doesn’t deserve the Best Picture Oscar this year: Martin Scorsese deserves it more (because he’s never won an Academy Award)…
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