Letters From Iwo Jima
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: February 5, 2007

Taken together, Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima and its companion piece, Flags of Our Fathers cover a lot of thematic territory. The two films examine The Battle of Iwo Jima from both the Japanese and American perspective, and offer a fascinating deconstruction of the iconic photograph of U.S. soldiers raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi. American filmgoers might see another war film on the marquee, and predict clichés. After all, what else can be said about war, after Platoon, Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down? Well, to those who think they’ve been there and done that, be assured: Clint Eastwood’s take on the subject is well worth your time. These dovetailed epics are unique in their portrayal of war as a place where perception and reality can’t seem to co-exist.

This theme is significant in our increasingly polarized country, which seems to be dividing itself into “perception people” and “reality people.” If you tend to champion perception, particularly as a tool we use to achieve a critical end, then you may be inclined to object to these films. First Flags of Our Fathers portrayed the soldier as a man reduced by his government to a military unit, to be used, manipulated and ultimately discarded. Next Letters from Iwo Jima dares not only to humanize our World War II enemies, but to depict the Japanese army as practically pre-vanquished before we landed on the island. Some might argue that Clint Eastwood has spent five hours of celluloid and millions of perfectly useful American dollars on an effort to undermine the courage and sacrifice of the troops that fought and died at Iwo Jima. However, that would be a mis-perception of Eastwood’s message. The soldiers in these films are depicted as human beings, some decent, some dishonorable, but all of them enduring perils few of us can imagine. What Eastwood has done is not undermine them with the truth; he has shown us they cannot be undermined by the truth. His endeavors are a plea for reconciliation between perception and reality—particularly when it comes to a country’s obligation to truly honor the sacrifice of its soldiers.

Letters from Iwo Jima follows two main characters, the Japanese general Kuribayashi, who was assigned to defend the island, and a lowly and borderline-treasonous grunt named Saigo, who wants only to survive and get home to his wife and infant daughter. Interestingly, the two men, at complete opposite ends of the chain of command, are at nearly constant odds with all of the fanatically suicidal and fascist junior officers in their midst. Unlike the American army in Flags of Our Fathers, the Japanese army of this film is fraught with disunity. They are also starving, under-resourced, falling over dead from dysentery, and more-or-less abandoned by their homeland. Kuribayashi’s journey through this film is one of interminable frustration, as he tries to mount a sound defense with a team of mutinous subordinates. Meanwhile, Saigo’s journey is almost comically harrowing, as he frequently finds himself in more danger from his own army than from that of the invaders.

These are sympathetic characters, and there are a few more. Hopefully the American filmgoer can accept the logical certainty that there were at least four or five decent human beings among the 20,000 Japanese killed at Iwo Jima. It’s true the Japanese ambushed the United States at Pearl Harbor (they flew planes into us, no less.) Also true they conducted themselves barbarically at times during World War II, particularly in their treatment of prisoners of war. But while Eastwood crafts his film around characters we can like, he is also appropriately critical in his portrayal of the imperial Japanese military. It’s not a subtle message. In fact, in asking us to assume a Japanese perspective on WWII, Eastwood has immersed into a fascist culture with no right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.

Some viewers might take exception to a pair of scenes where a Japanese officer shows mercy and kindness to a captured American soldier, while elsewhere an American soldier shoots a couple of POWs in cold blood. It’s true that if you isolate these two scenes you’ve got an odd piece of anti-American propaganda. But the scenes do not exist in isolation; they are balanced by two other scenes involving prisoners, one where the Japanese butcher an American captive, and another, at the end of the film, where it’s the Americans who show mercy when they might easily have pulled the trigger. When all is said and done, Eastwood tells the story responsibly. And at this point in his career, who can expect anything less from him?

Letters from Iwo Jima is a powerful film on its own, as is Flags of Our Fathers. But these two films demand to be contemplated as a single work of art. Viewed in tandem they provide a textbook example of form following function. Eastwood offers frequent overt ruminations on the power of perception, and all the while his two films repeatedly offer fascinating observations of each other, as certain events are witnessed from different perspectives. The raising of the flag is the most obvious example, an amazingly complex event that inspired the entire first film, but occupies only a few frames of the second film. Another is the dramatization of the pre-invasion bombing of the island by the American air force. In Letters from Iwo Jima this is a terrorizing and thoroughly demoralizing experience, perhaps the most significant factor in Japan’s defeat. In Flags of our Fathers it’s a couple of lines of dialogue between American soldiers preparing for battle. In these moments, Eastwood’s war film transcends its own genre, and becomes more a portrait of our global, human conundrum. Do we want to control our world? Or understand it? To do one, it seems, we must forego the other.

Copyright © 2007 Theo Michelfeld