We also get some of the strategy behind the fortifications on the island we learn how and why the tunnels were built in the mountains and how they were defended.
What is the other letters from iwo jima movie full#
"Letters" shows the full scope and duration of the battle, which didn't come across as much in "Flags". Where "Flags" was told mostly in flashbacks, "Letters" - shot almost completely in Japanese with English subtitles - takes place squarely during the Iwo Jima battle itself. These men are like all soldiers - frightened, confused, struggling to do their duty. The quietly effective screenplay by Iris Yamashita paints a portrait of these soldiers without ever resorting to the clichés of Japanese pride. The actors are uniformly outstanding, but the always-wonderful Ken Watanabe stands out in a powerful, nuanced performance as General Kuribayashi, commander of the Japanese forces on the island. That one shot speaks volumes about the significance of that event from both sides of the battle lines.
Eastwood allows this moment to stand on its own, miles away, seen through the eyes of the General. But the most powerful shot in "Letters" - perhaps its raison d'être - might be of the infamous flag raising itself. The films go together through visual cues - a long shot of the approaching American fleet, a frantic scramble across the island in the dead of night. Eastwood is a wise enough director that he doesn't tie "Flags" and "Letters" together in some hoary clichéd way (having characters pop in and out of the different movies). The man whose "Flags of our Fathers" covered Iwo Jima from the American point of view, now turns his camera to the other side of the battle lines, and it results in one of our most powerful and unique war movies. It's a quiet moment, but it says it all - about men, about politics, about war. The Japanese men remark that their mothers give them the same advice. She tells her son to "do what's right, because it is right". During one of the many moving moments in "Letters from Iwo Jima", Clint Eastwood's second film based on that pivotal World War II battle, Japanese officers read a letter off the dying body of an American soldier.
0 kommentar(er)
