FILM
REVIEW – LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
Clint Eastwood’s remarkable film companion to Flags Of Our Fathers tells the story of the fall of Iwo Jima entirely from the point of view of the doomed Japanese defenders.
Told largely in subtitled dialogue with a cast unknown to
Western audiences, this is a film unlike any you would expect from Eastwood,
and one of his greatest achievements.
As US forces pressed the Japanese back in the Pacific, the war moved to a bitter struggle for the Japanese owned islands, where the Japanese were brainwashed into fighting to the last man and bullet, with intense fanaticism. One such island was Iwo Jima, already dealt with for American audiences in the under-rated and dark edged John Wayne film, The Sands Of Iwo Jima.
With little natural cover, the Japanese arrived and prepared to dig hundreds of underground shelters and machine gun nests. They sensed the folly of the project from the outset, and as the Americans got nearer, they wrote letters home to tell their loved ones of their story – many of the the letters were never posted, but buried on the island, leaving the men wondering why they never got replies.
Moral among the defenders was low even before the Americans attacked, but one division was cheered by the arrival of a sporting hero, a man who won medals at the Olympics and became a famous show jumper. He has brought his horse to the island too. When the horse is killed in one of the first air-strikes, moral plummets again, and as the bitter battle becomes hopelessly lost, the men choose to commit suicide, individually or in groups. A few who choose to break a national taboo, and surrender, risk execution for desertion, and in the final moments, the last few characters break through to the Americans to offer to surrender, and get gunned down anyway.
As with Flags Of Our Fathers, this film is told largely in flashback as the descendants of the fallen uncover the truth about their fathers.
Arthur Chappell
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