Review

Review Date: 4-February-07
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

"Letters from Iwo Jima" is an engaging saga from the start. In 1944, a Japanese general (Ken Watanabe) arrives on the now-historic island to command its defense against the imminent American invasion. While he establishes himself as friend or foe among the other officers, including a dandy who competed in the 1932 Olympics (Tsuyoshi Ihara), the men who comprise his force undergo the universal experience of the wartime soldier: digging trenches, fighting dysentery, complaining about conditions, and wondering what it's all about. One of the grunts emerges as their collective voice, a baby-faced baker (Kazunari Ninomiya) with a strong will to live and a daughter at home whom he has never seen. High or low, everyone writes letters to their loved ones, which connects them to the past they knew and (unknowingly) to the future that remembers them. I'm a sucker for epistolary nostalgia any day, and I was hooked on this message as soon as its seal was broken.

That the film dims a little in its second half is no fault of director Clint Eastwood, who imbues every frame with his particular brand of cinemagic. (Everything feels achingly beautiful even when it's horrifying, in part through his choice of music.) Nor can the actors be faulted, as they're superb across the board. At some point screenwriter Iris Yamashita succumbs to the fact that she's working on a war movie, which means the characters and their stories make way for bombs and bodies. New items of interest emerge with the gore, such as the code of honor illustrated by hara-kiri and a transmission from the Imperial command which tells the general "we earnestly hope you will die for your country." But the stretches grow too long between scenes that really hit home, like the one in which the dandy, morphing into a marvelous hero, reads a letter found on the body of an American prisoner. It turns out that the desire to be safe in the bosom of one's family is felt around the world, which defines war as a tragedy on a widespread personal level. This is why Eastwood made "Letters from Iwo Jima" as a companion piece to "Flags of Our Fathers" (which relates the battle for the island from the American POV). In some ways our nations' anguish exposes our common humanity.

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.