nan | 楠木

Letters From Iwo Jima, together with Flags of Our Fathers, form director Clint Eastwood’s view on one of the most famous battles in the last stages of World War II. While Flags of Our Fathers narrates from the American perspective, and is centrally a dissertation of heroism, Letters From Iwo Jima tells the Japanese defenders’ story, and is an examination of loyalty and courage when facing impossible odds.

There’s always bound to be controversy when any film (or other media) tells the story from the losers’ side. To make it clear up-front, I don’t think Eastwood is trying to glorify Japan’s role in World War II. It would be naive to say that because Japan was the aggressor, therefore every Japanese soldier is completely inhumane. The tragedies and atrocities of war are the collective effort of a nation, and while each person that played a part in it should share the blame, that does not mean there are no humanizing aspects at all about each of those individuals. Letters From Iwo Jima therefore takes an objective stance: those Japanese soldiers are human beings too, and people should be allowed to see their side of the story. If we find those stories to be emotional, then that’s because there are common themes which apply to people of all nations (love, hate, fear, courage etc.), and it certainly does not mean that the film is trying to paint a revisionist version of history and glorify evil.

Back to the film itself. As the title implies, letters are a key part of the film’s narrative, and is also the context for the film. The letters mentioned here are the ones written by the Japanese soldiers stationed in Iwo Jima, and especially the ones written by the commander of those troops, General Kuribayashi.

The letters are what you’d expect from troops far from home: expression of loneliness, fearful of the uncertain future, and longing for the family (through vivid details like worrying about the state of the kitchen floor). There is an unnerving calmness in the way General Kuribayashi writes to his wife: he does not expect to survive the upcoming battle.

The battle is brutal, bloody and fierce. However, the film hardly spends much time on the actual progression of the battle itself, but instead focuses on the grim developments of the soldiers. Most of the film is surprisingly quiet, as a few main characters small-talk in low voices, with some artillery fire rumbling in the background.

The center-piece of the discussion is on how the soldiers face death, and the loyalty and courage displayed. The typical image of a Japanese soldier that is usually portrayed is one who is stubbornly loyal to the emperor and fearlessly suicidal; in Letters From Iwo Jima, such soldiers do exist, but the characterization is by no means absolute and they also contain multiple layers to their characters.

For example, of the central characters, General Kuribayashi, is devotedly loyal to his country as the commanding officer of the troops. He sees martyrdom as the ultimate honor. But he is also more open towards the question of sacrifice than his fellow officers: whereas they would order their troops to commit suicide after losing a defensive position, he would order them to fall-back and fight another day. Of course, eventually there would be no place to fall-back to, and no more days to fight: then the general also chooses to lead his troops on a suicide attack.

Another character, which is decidedly more interesting, is Saigo, who is only an ordinary soldier. He is also loyal and courageous, but in a very different way. He is loyal to his country, but also to his family (his wife with a newborn child). His courage is not in seeking death, but in trying to live (which is obviously cowardice to his peers). Along with another soldier Shimizu whom Saigo is first wary of but later befriends, the pair delivers the most emotional segment of the film: the two plan to desert together, and Shimizu succeeds in doing so, but is shot dead by his American captors out of convenience (so that they don’t have to guard him). Saigo stumbles upon his friend’s body, and is truly aggrieved.

The film is quite objective, with emotional empathy on the side of the Japanese. Both sides display unnerving brutality (the Japanese ordering their troops to aim at US medics, the US killing their prisoners). This is a film of tragedies, both personal and large. It shows the senselessness of war. It is not for the weak of heart, with direct graphic violence, and also depiction of war horrors. And at its core, it is a sincere and emotionally challenging account, from the less favorable side, of one of the bloodiest battles in history.

8/10