LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
June 14 and 21 2008, DVD, home living room, from library
I started watching this on the day after my birthday, assuming it'd be a great hangover movie, but I found it entirely too quiet, dark, and slow to keep me awake when my bourbon-ravaged brain demanded that I nap while the getting was good. A week ago, recovering from a minor bike accident that left me with a black eye, a deep cut, and a concussion, I decided to give it another whirl, because I had really liked what I saw before I started conking out and being unable to read the subtitles.
Clint Eastwood directed a troupe of accomplished and finely nuanced Japanese actors as though he was born to it. Actors are actors, he seems to shrug... a sad war movie about a group of doomed soldiers is the same, no matter if it's about the Allies or the Axis. We're all human, really, and the other side totally doesn't understand until it's too late... y'know? (All his films that I've seen really continue that theme, from UNFORGIVEN to A PERFECT WORLD... I wonder what SPACE COWBOYS has to say about it?...) Starring as the commander of the doomed, trapped Japanese troops, Ken Watanabe exudes competence and dignity, as well as being the only person in charge who seems to have any common sense. Too bad it's too late! Newcomer, and erstwhile pop singer Kazumari Ninomiya plays Saigo, who is really our central character, a very human former baker, who really doesn't give a shit about this war he's been drafted into; he only wants to get home to his bakery, his wife, and their new baby. Poor bastard. Tsuyoshi Ihara plays the ever-so-suave Baron Nishi, a former Olympic horseman, who is just far too elegant to really be a part of the troops - at least, not until the shit goes down and he no longer has a choice. Like the commander, Baron Nishi had spent some time in the U.S., and met Americans, and not only didn't hate them or hold them in contempt, felt very friendly toward them. Oh well; poor bastard. Another standout was Takashi Yamaguchi, playing a former military MP who got this shit detail because he displayed compassion to a helpless family at the wrong moment, thus being accused of lacking patriotism and being kicked out of the force. Poor bastard...
Yeah, so it's a movie like that. Eastwood, and his cinematographer Tom Stern, does wonders with light, unflinchingly displaying the cruel monochrome of the island where these unfortunates met their last stand (and put up a good fight, mind you). The film was originally titled "Red Blood, Black Sands", and in a way, that would have worked too. But yes, really, the story is about the letters that the soldiers wrote which never got a chance to be sent, and were only later excavated by archaeological teams. It would have been better to just let the letters speak for themselves, but since Paul Haggis (the hack that brought the world the vastly overrated and pandering CRASH, thus forever tarring the good name of Cronenberg's superior film) had a hand in the story, we get plenty of "Gee, the Japanese were just like us!" Yeah, you know what? We could have figured that out without it being telegraphed to us in dialogue.
Still, it's good, cerebral, brutal at times, and occasionally, surprisingly light-hearted. Good solid filmmaking; nothing revolutionary, unfortunately, besides the superhuman effort of directing across a language barrier, and Eastwood is far from being the first director to do that.
June 14 and 21 2008, DVD, home living room, from library
I started watching this on the day after my birthday, assuming it'd be a great hangover movie, but I found it entirely too quiet, dark, and slow to keep me awake when my bourbon-ravaged brain demanded that I nap while the getting was good. A week ago, recovering from a minor bike accident that left me with a black eye, a deep cut, and a concussion, I decided to give it another whirl, because I had really liked what I saw before I started conking out and being unable to read the subtitles.
Clint Eastwood directed a troupe of accomplished and finely nuanced Japanese actors as though he was born to it. Actors are actors, he seems to shrug... a sad war movie about a group of doomed soldiers is the same, no matter if it's about the Allies or the Axis. We're all human, really, and the other side totally doesn't understand until it's too late... y'know? (All his films that I've seen really continue that theme, from UNFORGIVEN to A PERFECT WORLD... I wonder what SPACE COWBOYS has to say about it?...) Starring as the commander of the doomed, trapped Japanese troops, Ken Watanabe exudes competence and dignity, as well as being the only person in charge who seems to have any common sense. Too bad it's too late! Newcomer, and erstwhile pop singer Kazumari Ninomiya plays Saigo, who is really our central character, a very human former baker, who really doesn't give a shit about this war he's been drafted into; he only wants to get home to his bakery, his wife, and their new baby. Poor bastard. Tsuyoshi Ihara plays the ever-so-suave Baron Nishi, a former Olympic horseman, who is just far too elegant to really be a part of the troops - at least, not until the shit goes down and he no longer has a choice. Like the commander, Baron Nishi had spent some time in the U.S., and met Americans, and not only didn't hate them or hold them in contempt, felt very friendly toward them. Oh well; poor bastard. Another standout was Takashi Yamaguchi, playing a former military MP who got this shit detail because he displayed compassion to a helpless family at the wrong moment, thus being accused of lacking patriotism and being kicked out of the force. Poor bastard...
Yeah, so it's a movie like that. Eastwood, and his cinematographer Tom Stern, does wonders with light, unflinchingly displaying the cruel monochrome of the island where these unfortunates met their last stand (and put up a good fight, mind you). The film was originally titled "Red Blood, Black Sands", and in a way, that would have worked too. But yes, really, the story is about the letters that the soldiers wrote which never got a chance to be sent, and were only later excavated by archaeological teams. It would have been better to just let the letters speak for themselves, but since Paul Haggis (the hack that brought the world the vastly overrated and pandering CRASH, thus forever tarring the good name of Cronenberg's superior film) had a hand in the story, we get plenty of "Gee, the Japanese were just like us!" Yeah, you know what? We could have figured that out without it being telegraphed to us in dialogue.
Still, it's good, cerebral, brutal at times, and occasionally, surprisingly light-hearted. Good solid filmmaking; nothing revolutionary, unfortunately, besides the superhuman effort of directing across a language barrier, and Eastwood is far from being the first director to do that.