>>REVIEW
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
STARRING Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya and Tsuyoshi Ihara
DIRECTED BY Clint Eastwood
Opens Friday, January 19
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When it comes to the Second World War, Hollywood often chooses to focus on the European theatre of operations. When filmmakers do shift their focus to the Pacific, audiences are greeted with unabashed flag waving (yes Pearl Harbor, I’m talking to you) or the day-to-day life of the American soldier. Given that iconic American filmmaker Clint Eastwood made Letters From Iwo Jima, it’s surprising that it explores the Japanese experience, instead.
Adapted by screenwriting golden boy Paul Haggis and Iris Yamashita from her novel Picture Letters From the Commander in Chief, Letters From Iwo Jima is a companion piece to Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers released earlier in 2006. That film looked at the lives of the American soldiers that raised the flag on Iwo Jima and how they came to terms with their wartime experience. Here, we see the other side of the battle with the camera firmly entrenched with the Japanese.
An ensemble piece headed by Ken Watanabe as General Kuribayashi, the film introduces us to a handful of soldiers as they desperately try to maintain a military foothold on Iwo Jima. Punctuated by letters to and from their families at home, Eastwood puts a face on the anonymous infantrymen as they contemplate the Japanese army’s mandate of honour at all costs.
For those who have become used to the bombastic combat films of recent years, Letters From Iwo Jima will feel rather subdued. Produced by Steven Spielberg, the film bears several visual similarities to his own Second World War epic, Saving Private Ryan. From the desaturated colour palette to the well-used hand-held camera during the battle scenes, Letters From Iwo Jima has all the earmarks of a modern war flick. Where it differs is in its treatment of character. In most North American films, the cast are often little more than cannon fodder as audiences wait for the next stunning military charge. Letters From Iwo Jima has its fair share of gory assaults, but Eastwood takes his time with the characters giving the film an almost languorous pace. As the battle escalates, the film becomes more and more dreamlike, mirroring the soldiers’ fatigue, hunger and disorientation. Eastwood deftly finds the balance between the explosive Saving Private Ryan and Terrence Malick’s methodical The Thin Red Line.
In the combat film genre Letters From Iwo Jima is in a class of its own. It’s sensitive but violent. It’s engrossing even when it deals with the tedium of war. In the end, that could hurt the film. It might have too much character development for war film junkies and too much violence for those who usually steer clear. Hopefully not, though, since Letters From Iwo Jima is as brave and powerful as the soldiers whose story it tells. |
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