To do this, he must persuade his men, many of whom are determinedfor reasons of honor to take their own lives, that fighting to the deathshould be their mission.Īlthough war movies traditionally encourage our patriotic bloodlust bymaking the enemy faceless or worse, we realize here, as the fightingbegins, that the people we badly wanted dead in the first film areprecisely those who we are made to care deeply about here and whosebravery this film so admires. Kuribayashi increasingly understands that defending this island is asuicide mission, that the only kind of success he can hope for isinflicting so many casualties on the Americans that they will loseheart. Rather than meet the Americans on the beaches, the general decides todig in in the interior of the island, creating an underground world of18 miles of tunnels and thousands of hollowed-out rooms and caves.
This isKuribayashi (played by Watanabe with intelligence, concern and a feelingfor command), a leader who pushes a heretical strategy even though italienates many of his officers. A new commander is coming to the island, an unorthodox, energeticindividual so consumed with his mission he has trouble sleeping. Saigo doesn't know it yet, but his days of trench digging are about toend. At thatpoint we flash back to 1944 and see a young soldier named Saigo(Kazunari Ninomiya) and a friend digging trenches on Iwo Jima and doingwhat soldiers everywhere do: complaining ("Damn this island, theAmericans can have it") and wishing they were back home. This is especially true once "Letters" gets past its framing device ofthe modern discovery of a cache of correspondence on the island. He hasso eliminated nonessentials, so gone away from showy directorialflourishes, that his only fingerprints are the absence of fingerprints,the way he allows us to be unaware that we are watching a directed filmat all. "Emphasize," however, is a word that doesn't completely suit thecharacteristic restraint Eastwood has brought to his work here. When actors speak intheir own language, they bring an entire world with them, they give asense of reality to their culture that, for instance, even as fine anactor as Marlon Brando couldn't create for his German soldier in "TheYoung Lions." Paradoxically, the difference in language makes thesimilarities between people "Letters From Iwo Jima" wants to emphasizeso much the stronger. While it is far from clear that any other Americandirector could have made a Japanese film or that Eastwood, for thatmatter, could have made one in yet another culture, the fit here isunexpectedly strong.Īlso, although making the film in Japanese may sound arbitrary (thescript was written in English and translated, with subtitles appearingbelow the images), the reality is the opposite. What Eastwood seemed to sense intuitively was the connection between hisown themes of men being men and the challenges of masculinity, and thenotions of honor, duty and heroism that are embedded in Japanese cultureand tradition. Tadamichi Kuribayashi (potently played by"The Last Samurai's" Oscar-nominated Ken Watanabe), Eastwood has,against considerable odds, made a film that both feels Japanese (to thepoint of being accepted there by audiences and critics alike) and likeone of his own. Initially inspired by a book of illustrated correspondence home from IwoJima's commander, Lt.