Review: Letters from Iwo Jima

As you can read from the title, I saw Letters from Iwo Jima. I really wanted to see the movie as I had seen Flags of our Fathers and I was intrigued by the idea of showing two different perspectives of the same battle.

It was interesting to note the similarities between the two films. Both films used flashbacks to progress their stories. However, in Flags of our Fathers, flashbacks of the battle of Iwo Jima haunt many of the returned soldiers. In Letters from Iwo Jima, the flashback is used to show the soldiers' lives before the war. This difference is a reflection of the fact that most of the Japanese soldiers who fought at Iwo Jima died there and were never able to go back home.

Letters from Iwo Jima is extremely well made. Let me warn you though, there are some very difficult scenes to watch. However, I do feel that these scenes are essential to the movie and underline one its main themes: the divergence of the values and convictions of the state with those of the individual.

The movie gives the audience a real understanding of what it was like to live on Iwo Jima. Soldiers lived in tunnels and caves dug out of the earth and rock. They lived under the constant barrage of bombs dropped from American planes long before the Marines arrived. Generals and soldiers had to deal with shortages in men and materiel, as the Japanese government pulled much of the military back to protect the homeland.

Clint Eastwood has done a fantastic job and I hope he is rewarded for his efforts tomorrow night at the Oscars.