Letters from Iwo Jima (Two-Disc Special Edition) | DVD Review

With Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood introduces us to the enemy by holding us up to a mirror.

The companion piece to Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers, released only a few months before Letters, shows the battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese through the stories of a general, a Lieutenant, a captain, and a soldier as they fight a war with their enemy and with their own convictions, all the while bearing the weight of the knowledge that they have no chance of winning on either front.

There have been hundreds of American films about WWII. True stories, fabrications, satires, pastiches cobbled together from a mix of fact and fiction.

The common denominator throughout them all is the perspective from which those stories were told.

The Americans are always the heroes. Always fighting for the right reasons, freedom, justice, etc… and regardless of where you lie in your opinion on the effect of the Industrial Military Complex’s influence on the United States decision to join the war, it would be hard to argue against this depiction.

WWII was a war in which the Americans were liberators and where they did have to defend themselves against unprovoked attacks. To portray their enemies in this war in a way that humanizes them is a difficult & dangerous path.

Especially for an American director.

Eastwood not only humanizes the Japanese in a way that elicits sympathy, he makes them into heroes. And as the relentless attack of the Americans whittles away at their numbers our emotions are mixed. We’re not supposed to feel relieved when an American soldier is taken out or when a Japanese soldier escapes certain death. But we in fact, want them to win even though they’re (and yes they were) the bad guys.

Eastwood achieved this manipulation of his audience by demonstrating the many similarities shared between the Japanese army and the Americans.

In Letters Japanese soldiers are drafted to serve, they write letters to their loved ones back home, they are fed propaganda about their enemy, they reminisce about the girl they left behind, they’re berated by their superiors during training, they are asked to follow orders without questioning, they show reluctance to fight trumped only by their loyalty, they find within themselves bravery at times and cowardice at others and occasionally a fearsome brutality. And, they die for their country.

These are scenes that we’ve become so familiar with that if the actors were substituted for Americans and the language swapped for English we wouldn’t know the difference.

Though Letters will always be held as the contrast to Flags a more interesting comparison would be films like Full Metal Jacket or Platoon, because while American WWII films SHOW why we fight, movies about Vietnam, like Letters From Iwo Jima, ASK why we fight. And that is what makes this film so compelling. For the first time we are presented with the notion that our enemy, at least this enemy, has just as little desire to go to war as we do.

While Clint’s directorial efforts are varied in subject and setting, most of which are on the dreary side, Flags and Letters represent his first foray into the genre of war. And though many find his style somewhat plodding it actually serves this story well. The staging of the scenes and the performances of the actors, who he admits to not being able to understand a great deal of the time during shooting, made every moment seem real and desperate. War is not linear. It’s random and chaotic. Eastwood captures the essence of this while still managing to flesh out the arcs of each character, never once giving the impression that a scene was thrown in just to advance the story or to falsify emotional resonance.

This is supported greatly by the film’s photography. From the opening frames showing us modern day Iwo Jima the cinematography of Tom Stern lets us know that this will not be a happy tale. The colors are washed out leaving us with only muted beiges, browns, greens and cold blues. It’s bleak and wrought with despair yet at the same time bares with it a solemn beauty.


The special features include footage from the World Premier in Tokyo and a press conference as well a quaint, yet unnecessary montage of stills showing off the films photography. But the real treats here are the two accompanying docs.

The first is a Making Of that is rather more interesting than most of its ilk as it actually details the thought process of several members of the creative team while demonstrating some of the hurdles that they had to overcome. This was a refreshing break from yet another explanation of how an effects shot was carried out (green screen, yeah… we get it).

The second is a doc about the casting process and while a great deal of the process was left out (it would have been nice to see a few auditions) this is a part of the development of a film that is often misunderstood or disregarded.

Note to future distributors of foregin language films: For films that are presented in widescreen or letterbox format why not use the black space on the bottom (actually on the top would be even better) for the subtitles? It would make it so much easier to read and wouldn’t disrupt the image as much.

A younger generation of movie goers may find it difficult to truly grasp the weight of what’s being portrayed in this film because of their distance from that era. Older generations may have difficulty accepting it because of their proximity to it. But to appreciate it, both parties need only watch the scene where Army Lt. Colonel / Baron Takeichi Nishi reads to his men, a letter found on the body of a fallen American soldier written by his mother detailing her wish for a quick end to the war, his safe return and her request that he always do what is right … because it is right.

Movie rating – 3.5

Disc Rating – 3