On both sides we see men acting as savages, true, but mostly we see men who would rather be home in bed.
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As most of you know, director Clint Eastwood made "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" back to back in 2006 to present both the American and the Japanese sides of the World War II battle of Iwo Jima. Of the two movies, I enjoyed "Letters" the most. While "Flags" had some harrowing action sequences, thereafter it tended to dilute its story with too many characters and to bog down in political rhetoric. On the other hand, "Letters," which also contains much the same action, is more focused, more reflective, and more affecting.
With WB's HD-DVD and DVD Combo edition of the film, we get the movie in both high definition and standard definition on flip sides of the same disc. For a couple of dollars more than a regular HD-DVD, it's a convenient way to play the movie on any HD-DVD or standard DVD player in your house. What's more, it gives you the opportunity to compare the differences in HD and SD, which in this case are quite noticeable. Since Eastwood, taking a nod from Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," intentionally drained the color from the picture, we don't get any brighter hues, just greater detail and object delineation. And the Dolby TrueHD audio is as good as it gets, reminding us that HD refers to high-definition sound as well as image.
Anyway, when the film opened theatrically, I read several criticisms from viewers who felt "Letters" was too understanding of the Japanese, giving America's enemy during the War too much credit, in essence, for being human like anybody else. After all, the propaganda in every war tries to persuade each party that their side is right, that God is with them, that the enemy is evil incarnate. During World War II, for instance, the Japanese and the Germans were to Americans the most loathsome, wicked people on Earth, and the Russians were our allies. Yet after the War, the Japanese and the Germans were suddenly our friends and allies, and the Russians were the new enemies. Go figure.
The book and movie that "Letters" most resembles is Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front," a story of World War I combat told from the point of view of a young German soldier. When as a child I first saw the 1930 movie version of "All Quiet" in re-release, it astounded me. I couldn't believe that the "bad" guys could be anything like us; this wasn't what John Wayne war movies had taught me. Like "All Quiet," Eastwood's "Letters" is an eye-opener, a reminder that no matter how misguided a country's leaders may be, the common folk, the foot soldiers, are always just that--common folk, with the same hearts and minds and longings and human feelings as everybody else in the world.
Iwo Jima is one of the Volcano Islands south of Japan, a barren, rocky place with a mountain at one end, no drinking water, and hardly any vegetation. Nevertheless, by the end of the War in early 1945, it was a strategic point for both the Americans and the Japanese. The Americans wanted to seize control of the island to use as an air base for strikes against mainland Japan. The Japanese needed to maintain control of the island because they didn't want the Americans to have a convenient launching place for their airplanes and because it was a matter of national pride--Iwo Jima was the only place the Japanese had controlled before the War that the Americans had not yet seized.
It looked to be an easy victory for the American forces, as the Americans greatly outnumbered the Japanese. What the Americans didn't count on was the determination of the Japanese soldiers and the brilliant tactics of their real-life commanding officer, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe). What should have been a one or two-day cakewalk turned into a forty-day ordeal.
Make no mistake, this is Watanabe's movie all the way, with good secondary support from Kazunari Ninomiya as Saigo, a young soldier. The movie concentrates on these two men for their differences and similarities. Kuribayashi is a distinguished officer, a much-decorated war veteran; Saigo is a lowly private who was a baker before the army drafted him. Yet both men long for their wives and families back home, and both men are decent people at heart.
General Kuribayashi does his best in what he sees as an impossible situation. His plan is to dig in, literally, and fight. No beach defenses, just underground fortifications. The General has his men excavate a series of caves in the mountain in order to defend the high ground. Kuribayashi also knows they will get no reinforcements, no support from sea or air. They are completely isolated and must fend for themselves. And defend they will do, to the last man. "Not one of you is allowed to die until you have killed ten enemy soldiers," the General tells his men. "Do not expect to return from here alive." Kuribayashi gave his men only one directive: To fight for their country and die honorably.
The actual landing of the Americans and the struggle for the island does not begin until about halfway through the film, and then the violence becomes intense. Eastwood pulls no punches in his depiction of the savagery of war, much of the action reminding us of "Saving Private Ryan," which is no doubt in part because of co-producer Steven Spielberg's influence. I think I read somewhere that Spielberg himself offered the script to Eastwood because he had already done something so similar. To be sure, the battle sequences are realistically severe in the extreme.
The movie does not take sides, but it does not portray the Japanese as the cruel and vicious opponent that many people insist they were. Screenwriters Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis based the story on letters from the Japanese that reveal the soldiers as being pretty much like all of us. Whether you agree with Eastwood's approach or not is beside the point; the filmmakers did their best to be as accurate as possible in their depiction of the battle and the attitudes of the men who fought it. On both sides we see men acting as savages, true, but mostly we see men who would rather be home in bed.
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