(Credit: Impawards.com)
Directed by
Clint Eastwood
Cast:
Ken Watanabe …. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi
Kazunari Ninomiya …. Saigo
Tsuyoshi Ihara …. Baron Nishi
Ryo Kase …. Shimizu
Shido Nakamura …. Lieutenant Ito
Hiroshi Watanabe …. Lieutenant Fujita
Takumi Bando …. Captain Tanida
Yuki Matsuzaki …. Nozaki
Takashi Yamaguchi …. Kashiwara
Eijiro Ozaki …. Lieutenant Okubo
Nae Yuuki …. Hanako (as Nae)
Nobumasa Sakagami …. Admiral Ohsugi
Akiko Shima …. Lead Woman
Lucas Elliott …. Sam
Sonny Saito …. Medic Endo (as Sonny Seiichi Saito)
Steve Santa Sekiyoshi …. Kanda
Hiro Abe …. Lt. Colonel Oiso
Toshiya Agata …. Captain Iwasaki
Yoshi Ishii …. Private Yamazaki
Toshi Toda …. Colonel Adachi
Ken Kensei …. Maj. General Hayashi
With all the insanity revolving around Oscar Season, it’s a wonderful time to take in some amazing movie-going experiences right now at your local cinemas. While the Best Picture contest may end up being a two horse race with Babel and The Departed duking it out for the prize, it was nice to see some other deserving pictures get nominations. For me, this goes especially for Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima, his companion piece to this past Fall’s Flags of our Fathers, which was a good film in its own right, but is dwarfed by the grace and splendor of this mighty epic. Letters from Iwo Jima is the real deal; a War film as haunting in its brutality as it is celebratory in its authentic humanity. While Flags may have tugged at the heartstrings, Iwo Jima grabs a hold of them and won’t let go, leaving you awed by its intimacy as much as its sequences of seemingly unending bloodshed give you reason to grieve.
Chronicling the defense of the island of Iwo Jima by Japanese forces, the film focuses mostly on two main characters. The first is General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), whose command is constantly being second guessed and scrutinized as he tries to save lives and bravely attempt to stem the attack of the Allied forces on the island. His struggle is counterpart to Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a lowly foot soldier and former baker, desperately wanting to simply see his family again, while fighting to not to give in to the hard-nosed zealots that would rather kill themselves than face defeat.
Both of these performances are exquisite in their own way, especially Watanabe, who shows a steely charismatic charm as Kuribayashi. You can see the pressure of the invasion getting to his psyche, as he tries to hold his forces together while the battle rages on towards its inevitable conclusion. What’s amazing is how effortless Watanabe makes this work, earning the right to be compared with other similar roles, such as Takashi Shimura’s Kambei in Seven Samurai or Tom Hanks’ Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan. This is a soulful turn by Watanabe that makes you not care what nationality he is, as his compassion for his dying troops is matched only by his ferocity as a warrior, making him a universal protagonist.
The timid Saigo is also made unforgettable by Kazunari Ninomiya, as his fear of both the deadly U.S. Artillery and his Japanese Commanders makes him the most unlikely of heroes, but as the battle wages on you stay tied to him, hoping against hope that he’ll be able to survive the massacre and his own short sighted leaders. He’s a man that does not believe in death for no reason, giving him nobility that he earns instead of having it given to him like so many around him that believe that only a glorious death is the answer. His gentle nature gives him an “everyman” quality that gives a superb counter-balance to the epic turn by Watanabe and adds wonderful dimension to Iwo Jima’s complex story.
For Eastwood, this has been a banner year, and Letters from Iwo Jima is a masterful achievement, reaching a type of serenity that few War films could even hope to achieve. Reminding me of Kurosawa’s Ran, we’re given moments of stunning beauty meshed with the horrible nature of human struggle. This is a brave and subtle piece of work, quietly moving us with scenes such as when celebrity Olympic athlete turned Japanese Patriot Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) shares in the last moments with an enemy soldier, while terrifying us with a sequence of mass suicide using only grenades.
Those disappointed with Flags of Our Father’s way of deemphasizing the battle of Iwo Jima to look at its effect on its combatants should not go in expecting the same here. We never leave the fighting for very long in this picture, as its battle scenes are as mesmerizing and visceral as those in the movie’s War film brethren Saving Private Ryan and the Korean War epic Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War. Isolated inside their own cave system, just reaching their brethren in the next encampment becomes a life and death struggle as often soldiers are shown have to run a gambit of death out in the open in order to try and get to safety, usually losing most of their numbers.
The biggest compliment that I can pay this picture is that it is a worthy addition to the legacy of the film maker who created Unforgiven, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby. While this film may not be his ultimate achievement, this would be the crown jewel for many hopeful film makers, unable to conceive of making a film with as much grit and poise. The film may end up losing on Oscar night amongst the struggle between Babel and The Departed, but few would argue that the movie’s legacy would not be as valid.
