More Iwo Jima

I think the solution to my movie reviews is simply to get one out of my system, and write a second one.

When I saw Letters from Iwo Jima, I had a few thoughts throughout. For example, I realized that even though this was based on real events, I had assumed many parts would be fictionalized. However, many parts were not as fictionalized as I had thought.

General Kuribayashi had studied in the west (in Canada) and had traveled extensively in the United States. He did not support war against the United States. He had developed the strategy shown in the movie based on the idea that Japan could not help out, and therefore the battle at Iwo Jima was doomed.

This meant digging out tunnels in the mountains and abandoning the beaches because there would be no support. Kuribayashi's goals were simply to take out as many Americans as he could while he could. The Americans sent forces that were four times the size of the Japanese defending the island, and suffered casualties four times as great.

And despite Eastwood's inclination to spice up people's lives in films (for example, his own role in Million Dollar Baby where he read Gaelic), apparently they really did discover personal letters from Kuribayashi to his family, where he drew sketches for his family.

Emotionally, I felt the film didn't move me as much as I thought it might, and yet, there are tiny things Eastwood does well. Most of these are tiny observed points, such as the Olympian Japanese who brings his horse. Eastwood makes fun that most people have a picture of a girlfriend or family member, but this guy has a picture of his horse. It's no wonder, when the horse passes away, that he grieves.

Eastwood probably knows that acting is often about the tiny things you do. Coughing, wiping the brow off your head. An early scene has Watanabe (as Kuribayashi) telling one of his subordinates to run around on the beach as he tries to think about how Americans would attack. But he cuts that with lowly soldiers watching the general do this.

Little points are made throughout. There's the gun that the General carries, which we see two more times to great effect, the second time when he receives the gun as a gift, and once again, when an American soldier grabs it as a spoil of war.

When there are so many characters in a film, everyone needs to be distinctive. Saigo is the baker who is the reluctant soldier. He never, indeed, decides to be a great soldier. In fact, much is made how poor a shot he is. It's a testament to Eastwood that his goal is not to make him any sort of hero at all, but a victim and beneficiary of circumstances. Saigo's goal is really to survive the war, although, at a key scene at the end, he sees the gun of his former commander held by an American, and then simply swats away at Americans, even though it risks getting himself killed.

There has been, I think, some wish fulfillment in people pointing to this film and its relation to Iraq. Are we ready to have a film where Iraqis are heroes of sorts? Heck, we can't even make one about Germans, because history has done such a good job demonizing Nazis. The Japanese weren't exactly noble either. Koreans and Chinese still harbor deep resentment over Japanese treatment of their people.

Even so, it suggests that in any war, there are people who support it and those who don't, and there is, alas, lots of needless death.

Perhaps it's because I'm Asian and because I watch a lot of foreign films that I don't view this film as being particular enlightening. Maybe the average white American who thinks of the war abstractly, rarely thinks about their enemy.

It makes you wonder how people would have reacted had this film been made in, say, 1950, mere years after the war.

By rights, this is a rather modern film, where some of the edges are softened because the average person isn't a soldier and can't imagine a situation where their fellow man might take their own lives by hand grenades.

If there's a scene that perhaps captures the film, it is from the trailer, where Kurabayashi walks with his cane, staggering over the black sands (due to volcanic ash) of Iwo Jima. He has been called to carry out a duty, a duty he doesn't think the country should have made, but one he's nevertheless willing to do.

Certainly, Americans marvel at the code of honor the Japanese had (the next-generation Klingons were modelled after war-time Japanese).

I'm now intrigued by watching Flags of Our Fathers as a companion piece. That film, apparently, treated the Japanese as nameless, faceless killing machines, and this flips the role, and so, each may inform the other.

And such films often inform us in our current day, where we hear mounting casualties in Iraq, and yet, have no real sense of what the even means.