? Clint Eastwood’s companion film to his Flags of Our Fathers tells the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from the view of the Japanese, in particular the commander Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) and a private played by singer-actor Kazunari Ninomiya.
+ Eastwood’s mostly
subtitled film (with a script by newcomer Iris Yamashita in collaboration with
Flags scribe Paul Haggis) is most fascinating for its unique perspective.
Watching the huge American naval contingent arrive provides quite a different
sense from the same scene’s counterpart in Flags. Brief flashbacks and
the interactions of the soldiers provide a military and cultural context for
the willingness of the Japanese to sacrifice themselves, resulting in a
stunning casualty rate exceeding 95%. Yet the movie shows them as brave but not
fearless, not the automatons that the Americans suspected. Kuribayashi, the
commander, had spent time in America, and his character merges the Japanese and
Western sensibilities. Cinematically, Letters gives a more vivid
portrait of the geography of the island and the elaborate tunnel system that
the Japanese had created in anticipation of the battle. Both Watanabe, who’s
played similarly powerful men in The Last Samurai, Memoirs of a
Geisha, and Batman Begins, and Ninomiya give appealing performances.
The 60-years-ago flashback device is more effectively used than in Flags.
- Although powerful,
the movie feels overlong at 142 minutes. Additionally, the more historic movies
I see, the more I’m convinced of the merits of on-screen titles, which in this
case would have better conveyed the passage of time. It’s hard to tell that the
battle took over a month, and the war preparations over half a year.
= *** Unlike Flags
of Our Fathers, which primarily depicts the aftermath of the battle, this
is all-war, all the time. Depicting combat at its most desperate and horrific,
it’s a better film than Flags, but it may seem tedious to some.
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