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Letters from Iwo Jima

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From the liner notes

Sixty-one years ago, US and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima. Decades later, several hundred letters are unearthed from that stark island's soil. The letters give faces and voices to the men who fought there, as well as the extraordinary general who led them.

Almost 7000 American soldiers were killed on Iwo Jima; more than 20,000 Japanese troops perished. The black sands of Iwo Jima are stained with their blood, but their sacrifices, their struggles, their courage and their compassion live on in the letters they sent home.

Review

Following Flags of Our Fathers, director Clint Eastwood sticks to the anti-war genre with another adaptation of one of World War II’s most lopsided battles, this time from the Japanese perspective. General Kuribayashi (Watanabe) arrives on Iwo Jima and immediately gets to work formulating his ingenious system of defensive caverns and tunnels. His lively cast of subordinates include a former Olympic champion (Ihara), an unruly Lieutenant (Nakamura) and a young, reluctant baker turned soldier named Saigo (pop star Ninomiya) who is melodramatically married with a newborn child he has yet to meet (even if it was true, the film character doesn’t feel authentic). Flashbacks from characters like these create the image of a country that feels the suffering of war just as much as any other. About an hour into the film, American warplanes appear and are soon followed by the famous beach raid. The Japanese soldiers hang in there for about an hour and a half until a general assault is decided upon and an American victory is sealed. The "Letters" of the title refer to documents that were unearthed in reality, an occurrence that bookmarks the film and serves as a final ode to the now non-faceless fallen soldiers.

The Japanese code of honor supplies the film's main narrative: dying for one's country is an honor, do not let emotions interfere with one’s duty. The soldiers in the spotlight are those who struggle with this concept, although ancient ideals always prevail in the end (albeit to tragic results). The film takes a neutral stance on these ideals although the battle's outcome will surely make up the minds of most viewers for them.

The film is well-shot, often in the shaky war-cam manner, though there is one large problem with the scope of the conflict itself. The viewer is given a huge, glorious glimpse at the invading forces, but it seems like there are only a few dozen Japanese soldiers on the island rather than the reported 22,000. This may have been intentional, but the action scenes end up feeling odd as the Japanese seem even more ridiculously outnumbered than they were in real life. The concept of American soldiers being weak due to their inherent emotional behavior is quickly proven incorrect.

It's unfortunate that the film's cast has been consistently overlooked throughout this award season. Hollywood's go-to Japanese actor Ken Watanabe hands in another fine performance as does pop star Kazunari Ninomiya in the young lead role. Cult-turned-mainstream actor Shido Nakamura (Neighbor No. 13, Jet Li's Fearless) is truly a standout as the brash lieutenant who decides to take matters into his own suicidal hands....

Eastwood's intentions for making this foreign-language film are commendable, but the end result is just another anti-war film that adheres to the regular Hollywood conventions.

-- Eric Bresler