Letters From Iwo Jima - Preview & US reaction
Preview by Jack Foley
Sixty-one years ago, US and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima during the final days of World War Two. Decades later, several hundred letters were unearthed from that stark island’s soil. The letters gave faces and voices to the men who fought there, as well as the extraordinary general who led them.
The Japanese soldiers are sent to Iwo Jima knowing that in all probability they will not come back. Among them are Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker who wants only to live to see the face of his newborn daughter; Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic equestrian champion known around the world for his skill and his honor; Shimizu (Ryo Kase), a young former military policeman whose idealism has not yet been tested by war; and Lieutenant Ito (Shidou Nakamura), a strict military man who would rather accept suicide than surrender.
Leading the defence is Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), whose travels in America have revealed to him the hopeless nature of the war but also given him strategic insight into how to take on the vast American armada streaming in from across the Pacific.
With little defence other than sheer will and the volcanic rock of the island itself, Gen. Kuribayashi’s unprecedented tactics transform what was predicted to be a quick and bloody defeat into nearly 40 days of heroic and resourceful combat.
So forms the basis for Letters From Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood’s astonishing companion piece to his critically-acclaimed Flags Of Our Fathers, which followed the conflict from the US perspective.
When it was released in America before Christmas, it had many critics gushing. The National Board of Review named it film of 2006, while the Golden Globes recognised it by naming it best foreign language film. It’s in the running for best film at the Oscars, with Eastwood also up for another directing prize.
And it’s easy to see why. The film is another masterpiece. It opens in UK cinemas on February 23 and is one of the best war movies of all-time – made all the more remarkable because it unfolds from the Japanese perspective, showing a different and more humane side to the enemy.
Here’s a taster of some of the US reviews…
Film Journal International wrote: “It’s doubtful whether any other living director could treat this topic with the same respect and artistry.”
Boston Globe opined: “Eloquent, bloody and daringly simple, the movie examines notions of wartime glory as closely as Flags Of Our Fathers dissected heroism.”
Newsweek wrote: “Superbly acted, unblinking and unhysterical, it looks beyond politics into the hearts and minds of the men we needed to call ‘the enemy’ and lets us see ourselves.”
Newsday, likewise, gushed: “Eastwood may not be a primarily political filmmaker but his celebration of men fighting a lost war is timeless, as well as urgently topical.”
And Variety stated: “Taken together, Flags and Letters represent a genuinely imposing achievement, one that looks at war unflinchingly – that does not deny its necessity but above all laments the human loss it entails.”
Other reviews were similarly persuasive, making Letters From Iwo Jima one of the undoubted must-sees of the early part of 2007. Put it in your diary.