2006, USA
Adventure, Drama, History, War
If we shook hands with our enemies, would we still want to kill them on the battlefield? Director Clint Eastwood asks this question in his companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, giving a voice to the men who defended the island of their homeland.
Whereas Flags extrapolated its story from a single image, this film builds its characters from letters written home to Japan from the battlefield. Though introduced sweating and grumbling as they prepare the island for attack, their former lives are glimpsed while writing to loved ones, and it becomes obvious that they are more than merely soldiers. As they are forced into horrendous duties, they must question whether their honor for their country is greater than their love for their family, and whether those factors are one and the same.
The striking and formidable Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha) fills the boots of General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. His presence on the island is rumored to be second choice, and his immediate change in procedure creates tension between the other officers. Trained in America, his differing tactics are questioned as a cover for American sympathies, and there is soon dissension amongst the ranks.
The Japanese officers know there is no happy ending to this battle. The army and navy are not communicating with them or offering assistance, and they are left to their own devices. Most of the conflicted officers feel an honorable end can only be met through suicide and choose to disobey the general's orders to do otherwise.
Lowest in position is a young baker (brash and earnest Kazunari Ninomiya) who questions the effectiveness of their defense. Small in numbers and left with substandard weapons, the troops spend their hours digging trenches and caves in the hopes that holding their ground will be enough to win the battle. Worn out from exertion and picked off by dysentery and dehydration, the troops are more forlorn than formidable. Before the Allied infantry reaches the beach, the soldiers are exhausted by nonstop aerial strikes. A desire to defend home and country can only overcome so many obstacles.
Eastwood intersperses clips from Flags for the battle scenes, but most views of the Marines are from a distance. In Flags, the enemy was virtually invisible. In Letters, though at first represented through endless aircraft and battleships, the warriors soon come face to face with one another.
Through a captured American prisoner the soldiers glimpse kindness, but this vision is disturbed by another American who shoots a surrendering Japanese soldier. Eastwood does not attempt to make either side perfect heroes. There are those in power who think through their actions and consider the effects on their soldiers, and there are others who can only see glory and one method to achieve it. This film presents the two options through many examples of character foils, much as Eastwood presents both sides of the battlefield through his two films.
Eastwood has managed to give both armies a sense of humanity. Fragile and imperfect, these men fight for their beliefs and a desire to protect their homeland. They are not the men who started the war, but it is their job to put an end to it. When viewed from both sides, a desire to better know our enemy comes to the forefront, and the futility of war is put into question.