Flags of Our Fathers / Letters From Iwo Jima

Watched a DVD of Clint Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers, and found it gripping enough to today rewatch Letters from Iwo Jima, two ambitious films that were released almost at the same time, covering both sides of a vicious and pivotal WWII conflict between the US and Japan.

Remembered most of Letters from Iwo Jima, but not much about its ending, so was happy to rewatch it when Mum said she wanted to, and it was nice to try to understand more of the dialogue. It was just as moving as the first time, although the criticism that all the sympathetic commanders are the ones who have been to America and learned about the enemy first-hand stuck out to me more this time. Also, I don’t know if it was because of the nice TV, but it seemed like both films had a strange quality to the filming, too smooth, too crisp, perhaps too many FPS, which make it oddly enough seem more amateurish, like it was all filmed on high-quality student cameras. Odd.

Edit: Original impressions of Iwo Jima from 2007

Letters from Iwo Jima

I didn’t see the counterpart movie presenting the American point of view, but typically of my family, the East-Asian point of view is much more appealing, since Mum is fond of her Oriental heritage and Dad is averse to war films from the Western point of view, having grown up with agonisingly jingoistic ‘How our boys socked one to Mr. Hitler’-type movies in theatres where one was obliged to stand for the National Anthem. I am equally pleased to see war films from any point of view, though, and was impressed by Letters from Iwo Jima, the story of America’s invasion of the small, strategically vital island of Iwo Jima in WWII told from the point of view of the Japanese.

Clint Eastwood has reinvented himself as a serious filmmaker well, and some of the best directors are the invisible ones – the ones that just make great films without drawing attention to themselves. Direction is simple and never surprises, but the battle scenes are believable and hit home and the cinematography is excellent – some of the simple shots of faces are quite simply perfect. The script is a good, solid one, with a layer of unromantic realism (a character is caught emptying the slops bucket when naval bombardment commences), some well-fleshed-out characters and an eagerness to show that both sides were human, with charity and cruelty on either end. It’s not exactly subtle, but it’s subtle and believable enough never to seem cheesy, and thus it works.

Focusing on two characters in very different situations, the lowly drafted footsoldier Saigo and the commanding officer Kurabayashi, the line of command is what really makes the movie interesting, and the way that the famous Japanese feudal ideals of self-sacrifice, dying with honour and gaining glory through suicide war with self-preservation and good strategy – though the Hollywood romanticism of brave acceptance of death remains, and moves. A simple and straightforward movie, like Apocalypto made to seem more ‘artistic’ than it really is simply because it’s in another language (I understood at least 50% of the Japanese, and kept noting how loose the subtitles were (for natural flow; understandable), and thought Watanabe Ken’s pronunciation early in the film a little strange, almost slurred), but it is thoroughly enjoyable and comes highly recommended.