In Letters From Iwo Jima, director Clint Eastwood mirrors Flags Of Our Fathers with a Japanese version of events on a formerly obscure rock in the South Pacific. Like the earlier film, Eastwood is less concerned with the causes and provocations underlying the war than recording the soldiers’ experience and how that differs wildly from the supposed glory of the campaign. Presented in the stark faux-monochromatic tones that have come to dominate military aesthetics since Saving Private Ryan, Eastwood’s film often seems closer to a Beckett play than a war movie. Beleagered Japanese troops suffer through food and medicine shortages and outbreaks of dysentry wth the slow dawning knowledge that nobody is coming to help. Those who survive these perils will die either in a hail of American firepower or by their own swords.
Eastwood is clearly moved by the perseverence of the Emporer’s troops in the face of certain death and shows a particular affinity with Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Watanabe, in a tender performance wrongly overlooked by the Academy), who masterminded their extraordinary last ditch defence. Sent to Iwo Jima as punishment for his fondness for Americans, the General’s poignant letters home double as the film’s narration. He, however, is only one of many similarly conflicted soldiers. Private Saigo (Japanese pop star Kazunari Ninomiya) fantasises about returning to the small bakery he ran with his pregnant wife. Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic horse-jumping champion who hung out with Hollywood stars before the war, recounts his predicament with a noble lyricism.
Like Flags Of Our Fathers, Letters forms a subtle yet scathing critique of the notion of glorious battle, but by taking history away from the victors, it’s that bit more heartbreaking. A remarkable achievement.