Letters From Iwo Jima (2007)

Directed By: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase, Shido Nakamura, Yuki Matsuzaki, Hiroshi Watanabe, Takumi Bando, Nobumasa Sakagami, Takashi Yamaguchi, Nae Yuuki.
Released: 23/02/2007

With Letters From Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood has completed his Second World War epic. And for the most part, the film is a grand success. It looks incredibly beautiful, it’s shot and cut elegantly and in Ken Watanabe it has a central performance to ground the events around him. It’s also commendable for Clint Eastwood to decide to tell this story. Originally he had intended only to tell the American story of Iwo Jima, but having discovered letters from the soldiers who spent weeks living in caves inside the hills, Eastwood thought it would be honourable to tell both stories. In his opinion Flags represented only half the story. And he was right. Rarely are we the enemy in war films and Clint Eastwood twice allows us to see attacks on captured American soldiers from the point of view of the Japanese soldiers. These are two of the strongest scenes in the film. It’s also rare that an enemy, Japan in this case, is treated with such dignity and respect. The compassion they show one particular American soldier is extremely moving.

There are two elements of this film which truly strike a chord with war films and their thematic institutions. Firstly we have General Kuribayashi who has been appointed to defend this island to the last man. Kuribayashi knows that this is a futile mission, the island will fall, but his honour derives from defending it the best way possible and protecting the people on the mainland for as many days as possible. Knowing the outcome of the battle, there is an air of fate and inevitability about the characters and story. This is highlighted most by the characters who are striving hardest to survive. Most notably, the extremely resilient and fortunate Saigo, who is trying to survive so that he might return to his wife and the child he’s never seen. These feelings and emotions are made all the worse as every soldier knows that this ashen island is where they will die. One writes to a lover back home that they are digging trenches, then comments they are digging their own graves.

One feature which underscores the difference between Flags and Letters is that restrained use of flashback in this film. Only a few key characters are granted flashbacks and their usually to highlight the conflicting environments they find themselves in. One particularly effective scene sees Kuriyabashi in America at an elegant dinner party where to possibility of American and Japan going to war is discussed. Kuriyabashi shows his true colours as a soldier first and foremost in this environment. It’s an elegantly written scene which great light on Watanabe’s character. This is what marks out these flashbacks. Their back stories are used the help deepen the characters and it is handled rather effectively, even if some of the flashbacks seem a little disjointed.

What this film captures perhaps slightly more than Flags though is the combat. Flags suffered critically because too much of the film felt like a retread of Saving Private Ryan. That film being commended for the harrowing and realistic fashion in which it depicted the beach landings. But Ryan hardly holds the monopoly on modern war action and Flags is a film with a much more critical and in depth view on the effects of war on its soldiers and America. But with Letters Eastwood marries the conflict and realism dramatically and creates a few genuinely harrowing moments. The purpose the violence serves in this film highlights the unenviable position the Japanese soldiers were in. Most of them were not actual soldiers but, like one of the films central hero, Saigo, whose actually a baker, where conscripted. Saigo becomes the contrast to Kuriyabashi, the soldier in heart and mind. Together they form an unlikely friendship and mutual respect which gives the film one of its most endearing relationships.

But ultimately Letters of Iwo Jima fails to light up the screen in the same way Flags did. The film feels less significant in the overall scheme of things in the war for the Japanese than it does for the American. Whilst American uses the image to push on and find further funding to end the war. We never learn of the fate the fall of Iwo Jima leaves on Japan and the people there. Add to this that it takes slightly too long for the battle to begin and the film falls just short of equalling what Flags achieved.

Ultimately Letters will be considered alongside Flags rather than separately and with that in mind the two films are a resounding success despite the commercial failure of them both in America. In time though I feel that they will be regarded as Second World War films to rival some of the best and most acclaimed war films of recent times.