Letters from Iwo Jima a rare, haunting war film triumph

Matthew Poland Guest Writer

François Truffaut once famously argued that it is impossible to make a successful anti-war film, because by its very nature cinema renders violence an exciting spectacle. Few films produced in the 40-year interval since his claim have done anything to challenge it. Certainly, war movies of the past decade have demonstrated a marked ambivalence toward violence, and even those purporting to be against war crumble under closer scrutiny. Steven Spielberg’s well-intentioned Saving Private Ryan asked us to balk at the bloody invasion of Normandy, but simultaneously reveled in its gore. Likewise, Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down immersed us in war-torn Somalia but merely made us voyeurs to the gruesome bloodletting that transpired there. Perhaps the most persuasive denunciation of war in recent years, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line succeeded only by aestheticizing World War II so as to divorce it from the staged realism of its contemporaries.

Part of the problem, of course, is one of designation: By defining themselves in opposition to war, these films nevertheless define themselves in relation to it. Letters from Iwo Jima, the film by Clint Eastwood that was nominated for Best Picture at last weekend’s Academy Awards (and now in wide release), succeeds in great part because it defies any easy designations. Eschewing brashness for humility, the film, which portrays the Japanese perspective of the 1945 battle at Iwo Jima, downplays carnage in favor of meditative character study. Eastwood populates his film with the usual suspects—the stoic general, the macho lieutenant, the bookish underling—but he tweaks these characters just enough to make them resonate. There is bloodshed, to be sure, but the focus is on the characters—their hardships, their loyalties, and their ideologies.

The film begins with the arrival of Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) at Iwo Jima, the first piece of Japanese land threatened by the Allies. Kuribayashi has been sent to manage the forces defending the desolate island, but he and the other men quickly realize that they’re fighting a losing battle. Eastwood reflects their anxieties through the expressionistic landscapes, which, drained of color, assume an existential bleakness. The film divides its time between the claustrophobic tunnels of the island’s rocks and the barren black sand beaches. Neither provides comfort, but where the sheltered tunnels promote a level of introspection, the stark, open beaches offer only despair.

As futility sets in among the men, Eastwood explores the soldiers’ individual motivations and aspirations. Encompassing a host of varied backgrounds, the men exemplify the diversity that war hastens in its armies, and their ideologies often come into conflict with one another. Particularly resonant throughout the film is the tension between loyalty to one’s country and loyalty to oneself—a conflict between traditional nationalistic values and modern individuated ones. In perhaps the film’s most striking scene, a group of soldiers, told that they must preserve their honor in the face of defeat, commits collective suicide, each clutching an activated grenade to his heart in horrifying succession. Most of the men carry out the order as they would any other, but several young soldiers look on in terror with the recognition that they must follow suit or live ignobly. It’s a testament to Eastwood that the scene doesn’t feel exploitative; in another film, the concentration would be on the bloody swiftness of the event, but here, the shock and awe are rooted in the specific anxieties of those scared onlookers. By presenting the horrors of war in all their complexity, the film commits itself to representing the platoon’s multiplicitous viewpoints, and thereby diffuses the predominance of any single perspective.

Eastwood further explores the soldiers’ allegiances through flashbacks depicting their lives prior to war. They walk a thin line between sincerity and cliché; the film is at its weakest when a character’s past actions too conveniently emblematize his current situation. But there is an elegant simplicity to many of the backstories, particularly Saigo’s (Kazunari Ninomiya), an ingenuous baker who only wants to return to his wife and child. A stark foil to the committed Kuribayashi, Saigo represents the pragmatic voice in battle. His is only one in the complex polyphony of perspectives, each of which Eastwood presents with respectful restraint.

It is precisely within this polyvocality that the film’s humanity lies, for through its validation of both impassioned ideologues like Kuribayashi and worried pragmatists like Saigo, Letters affirms the multiplicity of viewpoints inherent in battle. Neither supporting nor condemning war, the film simply and soberly accepts its inevitability. At last, Letters is less about clear dualities—about what’s right and what’s wrong—than about the inclusion of other perspectives into a whole. The film itself is one half of such a whole—completed by Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, detailing the American perspective of the struggle. Though it employs the tropes of a Hollywood platoon film, Letters ultimately defines itself not in polemic terms, but in purely humanistic ones.