It was confined, not by political correctness exactly - who could ever accuse Clint Eastwood of this? - but by a kind of Eastwoodian reticence, and a need to reach out to the vanquished enemy in very American terms. In the end, I felt that Eastwood's attempt to find a way inside the mind of the Japanese troops was high-minded and generous, but lacking in real passion and flair. Just as Noël Coward told us not to be beastly to the Germans, so Eastwood is suggesting something similar with the Japanese. And the spectacle of Axis-power soldiers committing suicide in defeat is very different from that in, say, Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall, about the Hitler bunker. There is a horrible sequence in which a group of trapped Japanese soldiers in their dugout commit ritual suicide one by one, by snapping open a grenade against their helmets, and pressing it to their chests with a scream of "Banzai!" When Kuribayashi confronts his own terrible destiny, it is in much less claustrophobic, stomach-turning circumstances.
All this is personified in the Japanese commander, Lieutenant General Kuribayashi, very well and intelligently played by Ken Watanabe. And he is extravagantly positive about the best qualities of the Japanese fighting man: tough, manly, courteous, good-natured.
Letters from Iwo Jima, however, sticks mostly and grimly to the action on the island itself, pictured in a grainy near-monochrome, supposedly summoned up from a cache of troops' poignantly unsent letters unearthed there by 21st-century researchers many years later.Įastwood, perhaps in a spirit of gallantry, or simple caution, evidently does not care to ironise or call into question Japan's civilian beliefs the way he did with his own side. It is very different despite some spectacular battle scenes, it is more muted, more restrained, even faintly anti-climactic.įlags of Our Fathers (the first film) ranged freely from the field of battle to the manipulative political scene on the home front. This second movie takes place entirely within Japanese ranks, with Japanese actors speaking subtitled dialogue, and whom the non-Japanese-speaking Eastwood presumably addressed through an interpreter.
Letters from iwo jima movie synopsis full#
W ith this film, we can get the full measure of Clint Eastwood's bold and in its way remarkable two-part tribute to the fallen warriors of both sides at the Battle of Iwo Jima in the second world war.