Adapted from a book of letters from Japanese soldiers found on Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima takes place in 1944 during the fight for the island that was deemed strategic for both sides, a fight that ended with 21,000 Japanese and 6,000 American casualties. Spoken in Japanese with English subtitles, the film, a companion piece to Flags Of Our Fathers, dramatizes the battle from the Japanese point of view. Eastwood asks us to suspend our judgments and look at the bravery and nobility of Japanese soldiers fighting against insurmountable odds.
They are depicted as soldiers who loved their families but were victims of Japanese militarism, forced to adhere to the Bushido code of serving the Emperor by dying honorably rather than preserving one’s life. The hero of the film is Commander Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), an American trained Japanese General who was outnumbered by a ratio of five-to-one yet fought off the US invasion for over a month without air or naval support. He is portrayed as a warrior with dignity and courage who was called an American sympathizer by some officers but who only wanted to give his men a fighting chance.
Assisting in the preparations for an expected American invasion, are Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) and Lieutenant Ito (Shido Nakamur). Ito is a fanatical warrior who wears landmines around his shoulders and vows to destroy an American tank by pretending to be a corpse. We also get to know Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a Japanese soldier who left his job as a baker and his pregnant wife to join the military. Shown in a faded color palette that is almost black and white, Letters From Iwo Jima is a beautifully executed film that serves as a powerful reminder of our common humanity and makes clear the insanity of war and how it corrupts everyone involved.
Eastwood's acclaimed companion piece to Flags of Iwo Jima, Letters from Iwo Jima tells the story of the brutal World War II battle from the Japanese perspective, as a Japanese general (Watanabe) prepares to defend the vital island from an overwhelming American assault.
