Letters From Iwo Jima

Three words: Japanese Hamburger Hill. That's probably an unfair assessment, given that Letters from Iwo Jima is a far superior film to that late '80's Viet Nam War film, but once the battle action started I was having much the same feelings that I recall from when I saw Hamburger in a theater (and haven't seen it since, btw)--this disquieting feeling as the bloodshed grinds on and on and we see characters fall away one by one.

Letters is an astonishing film: an American film with an almost exclusively Japanese cast speaking Japanese and retelling the story of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in sympathy with the Japanese, when previous narratives have at worst demonized them and at best made them faceless automatons (even so in the companion film Flags of Our Fathers). It is a straightforward story well-told and well-acted, and that sums up its power. There may even seem to be a few war-movie clichés, but watching this film you just accept them without question.

While there were nods to John Ford in Flags, the pre-battle scenes on Iwo in Letters seemed so eerily like some Japanese films of the '50's and '60's that I thought director Clint Eastwood must have been channeling Akira Kurosawa (and that makes for some kind of going beyond full-circle doesn't it?). The film has even more color drained from it than Flags did, and when situations get especially grim it seemed to go almost completely black-and-white.

Letters is asking the question: what is it like to be the "bad" guys on the losing side? What happens when you prize honor and dignity and know you are in a situation where you are going to be killed? Letters provides some explanation for some of the more extreme actions taken by the defenders of Iwo.

The cast is uniformly excellent in their roles, and I thought Ken Watanabe's tightrope-walking portrayal of a decent commander who is also dedicated to his country was as complex and nuanced as one could hope for (too bad he wasn't as larger-than-life as Idi Amin).

However, I think Flags of Our Fathers was a better film, and it puzzles me why Letters should be receiving more accolades. Those I saw it with, who also thought Flags was excellent, thought Letters was better, but admitted that part of it was the novelty of the Japanese point-of-view--if it had been a similar story told with Americans then it wouldn't have been as good (is this why Japanese critics might prefer Flags?). I thought Flags was a more complex and deceptively subversive story, told in a way that makes one question American culture, but perhaps its unsettling nature and/or the way it was so entwined with aspects of patriotism that some viewers seemed to take at face value has been its downfall. Let me put it this way: I knew the concept of Letters and came away with pretty much what I expected, but Flags was a great surprise to me even though I had been clued in to how it was going to critically examine celebrity and heroism. I can see watching Letters one or two more times, but I would like to see Flags several more times. I can't wait for the DVD boxed set.