Saturday 21st November 2009

Letters from Iwo Jima

Director: Clint Eastwood
Year: 2006
Stars: Ken Wantanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara

In order not to totally forget the contents of Flags of our Fathers before watching this, I made a concerted effort to watch it fairly soon after seeing that movie. And I'm glad I did. An excellent movie in its own right, being able to relate it back to Flags of our Fathers made it all the more enjoyable.

This time around, we get to see the battle on Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers. Eastwood does an excellent job of portraying the Japanese battle mentality, without any of the standard American judging you may expect. It tries to tell the story as "straight" as possible, accepting the events as a part of a history.

One of the most enjoyable things about this movie, for me, was the way each film sticks with firmly telling the story of the relevant side. To the Americans, the Japanese soldiers were faceless, just as they really would have been. Similarly, the Americans are faceless to the Japanese, apart from when one soldier is brought into the caves. Scenes shown in Flags of our Fathers are filmed from the opposite side here, so you get the Japanese viewpoint.

Another excellent film, the film would work well even if you hadn't seen Flags of our Fathers. But it's a great companion piece to that film, and scores 5 because they work so well together. Had I watched them in the other order, the scores may well have been reversed (5 for Flags of our Fathers, 4 for Letters from Iwo Jima).

Rating: 5 out of 5