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Letters from Iwo Jima
Oscar-Nominated Flick Now Out on DVD Revisits WWII
Battle from
Japanese Perspective
DVD Review by Kam Williams
When Clint Eastwood came up with novel idea of making
two films about the same historic WWII battle, little did he know that
the one shot from the enemies’ perspective would turn out to be far more
moving. For while Flags of Our Fathers was just a Hollywood-style rehash
of the ubiquitous, patriotic-style propaganda from the Forties, Letters
from Iwo Jima is comprised of contrasting character portraits of
soldiers torn between dying with honor and the very human instinct of
self-preservation. Among the sympathetically-portrayed
men we meet are Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker who desperately wants
to survive to see his newborn baby; General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe),
a Westernized gent who has enjoyed visiting the United States;
Lieutenant Ito (Shido Nakamura), a proud soul inclined to commit suicide
rather than surrender; and Shimizu (Ryo Kase), a young MP new to battle
who is worried how he will respond to his first taste of combat.
It would take the GIs 40 days to prevail, since the defenders had dug
themselves deep into a subterranean maze of caves carved across the
island and into the face of Mount Suribachi. The movie makes it quite
clear that the Japanese knew they would lose even before the assault
began, yet they were under strict orders to fight till the bitter end.
In the face of that futility, they spend as much time writing letters to
loved ones, reminiscing about the good old days, and musing about the
meaning of life, as they do in the furious firefight against the
Americans. Nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture,
Best Director and Best Original Screenplay), and winning the Golden
Globe in the Best Foreign Language Film category, Letters from Iwo Jima
exudes an undeniable emotional honesty likely to touch the heart of even
the most embittered veteran of the Pacific theater.
Afterall, if we returned that barren pile of black volcanic ash in 1968,
why not posthumously recognize the humanity of the over 20,000 Japanese
who perished there, too? Very good (3 stars)
Rated R for graphic war violence.
In Japanese with subtitles
Running time: 140 minutes
Studio: Warner Home Video
2-Disc DVD Extras: Press conference, “The Making of” plus a couple of
other featurettes. |
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Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who
writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of
the African-American Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics
Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In
addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from
Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam
lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.
IMDiversity and THE BLACK COLLEGIAN are committed to presenting diverse points of view.
However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of
the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or
employees at IMDiversity, Inc. |
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