Letters From Iwo Jima

Letters from Iwo Jima is the second of two films about Iwo Jima by Clint Eastwood. Originally titled Red Sun, Black Sand (the new title seems more apt), Eastwood has filmed in Japanese (for the most part). Were it not for Mel Gibson filming Passion of the Christ in Aramaic or the more recent Apocalypto in presumably Aztec or whatever the language is, this might seem more novel.

It probably says something about the relations between US and Japan these days that one can make a film about Japan by an American that is clearly sympathetic to the Japanese. In a nutshell, the Japanese are people too.

The film starts off fairly slow so we can get to know better the General (played ably by Ken Watanabe in a much better role then the awful Last Samurai) and a lowly soldier, Saigo, who longs to reunite with his wife and daughter.

People always say that war films are all anti-war, and this certainly falls in that category. While the importance of Iwo Jima is stated in the film, once the body count starts going up, you just wonder at the futility of it all.

The film's story line is fairly straight-forward. At one point in time, the Japanese were not enemies with the Americans, allowing Japanese to visit the US from time to time. There's some sympathy shown by Japanese to Americans (though not everywhere) and similarly Americans weren't always so sympathetic to Japanese.

The film is more about small inflections, facial reactions, and even faces. When you have literally a cast of unknowns, the more distinct the people look, the better. Thus, old and young, thin faced and fat.

The reason the title works so well is that everyone is so literary, writing letters. I'm almost surprised that mail travelled so freely to an island, given that they seemed to be losing the war. Would letters help morale? And, some of the translations seemed a touch too Westernized.

There is a sense the film's a bit too Westernized, that it does indeed feel like an American director directing Japanese, even if he observes things well.

The film does convey a sense of the confusion in the war, but not so much a sense of what was happening. Perhaps that's because it's based on something real, where, say, Lord of the Rings and the battle at Helm's Deep had a rather simple idea: an attack on a fortress, that made it simple to follow, even as the storyline also followed only a few characters.

The running time, which is awfully long, though it never feels particularly long, is useful to convey the battle which seems to go on and on and on.

And, Eastwood's at least observant enough (or his writers are) to have a scene where a guy says he will throw himself under a tank as his last act of heroism, and finds it incredibly difficult to do so.

In the end, it feels a bit slight. At least, they didn't have any scenes of the baker (Saigo) meeting his wife and such.

Still, the impact of what happened and the meaninglessness of it all doesn't quite come through, which is too bad. The bar was set pretty high, but a bit too high for what ended up on screen.