Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Ryô Kase, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Shidô Nakamura, Takumi Bando, Hiroshi Watanabe, Eijiro Ozaki, Takashi Yamaguchi, Yuki Matsuzaki, Alan Sato, Nobumasa Sakagami, Masashi Nagadoi. [R]

Eastwood’s companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers (released a mere two months apart) depicts the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese defenders. General Kuribayashi (Watanabe) arrives on the island with orders to take command of the garrison and put forth a valiant effort, under no delusions that it will be anything but an extremely costly effort with virtually no chance for victory. Eastwood directs the harrowing action in a spare docudramatist style, unafraid to show the Americans as the “enemy” while also not shying away from being critical of the Japanese army’s hard-line “code” in regard to the shame of defeat and notions of cowardice. The heavily desaturated photography (many shots are nearly black & white) and brutal bursts of violence suggest a revisionist take, but the meandering storyline (replete with flashbacks and an abundance of minor characters that are hard to sort out) and emotional jolts and crescendos are of the old-fashioned discipline. Iris Yamashita, a research assistant on Flags, penned the screenplay; she and Paul Haggis get co-story credits. Steven Spielberg co-produced with Eastwood and Robert Lorenz.

80/100