As a companion piece to Flags of our Fathers, Clint Eastwood has now given us the Japanese side of the story of the battle for Iwo Jima in World War II. Letters from Iwo Jima is a powerful film that gives us very human Japanese characters as they know they will never be leaving this volcanic island. I went into the theater expecting to see an anti-war drama, and it could easily be seen that way. But Eastwood has given us more than that, something that almost anybody can appreciate no matter what their views. While Eastwood does occasionally dip the film into a bucket of sentimentality, he usually avoids giving the audience too much of a sweet tooth with it.

The story of Iwo Jima is widely known, but less known to those with little historical interest is the Japanese side of it. General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) is a Japanese soldier, loyal to his country but familiar with the United States. He's assigned to defend Iwo Jima, the first island the Americans would attack that could be considered Japanese soil. All realize it is a hopeless battle, but hope to bleed the Americans and delay the attack on the Japanese islands as much as possible. Meanwhile, the main soldier's point of view is via Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a young soldier who just wants to go home to his wife and new baby, who he has never seen. We see the building of massive amounts of tunnels throughout the island as the soldiers talk about what they think will happen while officers debate Kurabayashi's strategy of letting the Americans land and then attacking. When the American onslaught finally hits the beaches, we see the results as well.

The main reason that this movie stays with you, rather than just being dismissed as a overbearing attempt to humanize a former enemy, is that Eastwood (and writers Paul Haggis and Iris Yamashita) doesn't sugarcoat the horrible aspects of the Japanese army during the war. In the very first 1944 scene (the movie opens in the modern day), we see Saigo and his friend Nozaki (Yuki Matsuzaki) getting whipped for expressing "treasonous thoughts" by saying that they should let the Americans have the island. Kurabayashi puts a stop to it, but it is there. Other officers stubbornly disobey orders to retreat by saying that they must die honorably and killing themselves, as well as forcing their men to do the same. It's all hard-hitting stuff, made all the more real by Eastwood showing it all to us, both the good and the bad.

That doesn't mean Eastwood doesn't occasionally go too far with it. The music during the flashback scenes, soft tinkly piano music, grated on my nerves a bit. I valued the flashbacks, mainly from a "show, don't tell" way of showing the humanity of these characters, but the music just put it over the top and walloped the viewer with a fluffy clue hammer. "SEE! THESE PEOPLE WERE HUMAN!" It left me a little cold.

The acting is wonderful in Letters from Iwo Jima. Ken Watanabe is the only one that I believe is generally known here in North America (though Toshi Toda, who plays Colonel Adachi, has been very prominent in television guest-starring roles over the last couple of decades). However, most of them are fairly prominent in Japanese cinema and they do a wonderful job. Watanabe is so powerful, whether it's showing compassion for Saigo, anger at his orders not being carried out, or a desperate request near the end of his life (the circumstances of the real Kurabayashi's death are unknown, so the movie does have to pick one of the many possibilities). Ninomiya is also excellent as Saigo, a man who just wants to go home. His resignation to his fate is well-played, and when the possibility that it may not happen raises its head, Ninomiya does that well too. I can't think of a bad performance in this film.

As for the movie itself and Eastwood's choices, I'm a bit torn. I didn't like a couple of his choices, mainly leaving the storyline of Lieutenant Ito completely ambiguous. Instead, Ito's last scene shows him setting everything down and walking away. What happened to him? Given the character we see in the rest of the movie, it would have been nice to see either a comeuppance or some other scene that tells us his fate. I can't really talk about the second choice without spoiling one of the storylines, so I'll just say that I wish Eastwood would have given us a more powerful link between the past and the present. What we got was extremely nice and moving, but there's one last thing that I wish I had seen (if you've seen this movie, you'll probably know…either way, feel free to contact me if you are wondering what I'm talking about and don't mind being spoiled).

Eastwood has been criticized by some for not giving any context to the battle. While I believe that is a valid criticism, I didn't find the lack of such context a problem. If Eastwood would have gone out of his way to present the Japanese in this movie as nothing but sweetness and light, with no real faults, than the lack of context would have been catastrophic. As it is, I think the only context that's really necessary is knowing that this is a futile battle and hardly any of these men are going to survive (only around 280 of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers on the island survived). This is an examination of men in a martial culture dealing with this reality. As long as Eastwood avoids portraying the American soldiers as mindless killing machines (the pitfall that I am glad he avoided), I'm fine with telling the story of these soldiers and nothing but that.

I also liked a couple of other choices. First, we see a couple of scenes that were depicted in Flags of our Fathers from the Japanese side this time, which is interesting. And secondly, I'm glad that the entire movie is in Japanese with subtitles. It gives the movie a lot more impact that way.

Letters from Iwo Jima is a powerful film that will keep you thinking for a while. The graphic war violence may be upsetting to some, so beware of that. However, with that caveat, I would recommend this movie to anyone. While some could say Flags of our Fathers was a bit of polemic, Eastwood mostly avoids that trap and gives us a thought-provoking war movie instead.

Recommended:
Yes