by Omar Majeed

When Akira Kurosawa made his masterpiece Rashomon in 1950, he gave movie audiences the world over something special—a compassionate lens on humanity. Juggling various points-of-view of the same brutal incident, Rashomon had no clearly defined villains or heroes. This year, Clint Eastwood attempts a similar experiment with his back-to-back films on the battle of Iwo Jima. Eastwood’s last film, Flags of Our Fathers, told the story of American soldiers during the battle and its aftermath, while his latest, Letters From Iwo Jima follows the plight of the Japanese soldiers and officers right to the bitter end.

The story revolves around General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), who knows he is facing a doomed battle, yet manages the best defence of Iwo Jima possible. While most of his fellow officers are hell-bent on simple suicidal martyrdom, Kuribayashi strives to give his men a fighting chance, and his brilliant strategy of digging caves and tunnels in the mountains, instead of simply fighting the Americans on the beachfront, does manage to turn Iwo Jima into a battle instead of a massacre.

In a subplot, a poor soldier and former baker by the name of Saigo (played by Japanese pop star Kazunari Ninomiya), simply wants to stay alive and see his baby daughter. Ninomiya’s performance is exquisite, with his perpetually hangdog expression often stealing the show. Like Gen. Kuribayashi, he writes letters to his family, although there is little to no chance of them ever getting them. The film showcases these missives through repeated voiceovers and flashbacks.

With Steven Spielberg as co-producer, and Paul Haggis as coscreenwriter, Letters From Iwo Jima has Oscar pedigree written all over it. Moreover, it’s an epic, self-important and socially conscious film. Its artfully de-saturated cinematography, emotional score and rampant sentimentality might make it an easy target for scorn, but underneath all the pomp lies a decent little movie.

Eastwood’s direction, though sometimes heavy-handed, is more contemplative than polemical. If Flags questioned the very idea of heroism in modern-day battle, then Letters ponders the notion of a noble death and questions whether such a thing even exists.

So it’s a real shame whenever the film veers toward overblown sentimentality, especially in ham-fisted flashback sequences of happier times. It ruins the mood. Still, credit is due to Eastwood for crafting a pair of films that raise tough questions of war at a time when American military propaganda simply asks, “Are you with us or against us?”

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA opens this Friday, Jan. 19

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