Like Steve Nash or a fine wine, Clint Eastwood is getting better and better in his old age.
A companion piece to October's Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima tells the story of the infamous World War II Battle of Iwo Jima from the point of view of the Japanese soldiers. The film follows baker-turned-reluctant-infantryman Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya) as he fights for his life alongside his countrymen, men for whom honor and respect are paramount to life. Leading the Japanese attack is Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), an innovative leader who greatly admires his American counterparts. We all know how the battle will end, but this knowledge doesn't make the proceedings any less enthralling.
Eastwood does a remarkable job with this movie, perhaps his finest and most profound film yet. There's no dearth of Saving Private Ryans, but this is the first American film to completely take the Japanese perspective and portray the Japanese soldiers as the normal, sympathetic people that they were. It's shocking to see how much pressure the soldiers felt to die with honor, even if it meant killing themselves with grenades to avoid capture. Eastwood's treatment allows sympathy for the Japanese, as audiences pray the soldiers will survive and feel devastated when they don't.
Eastwood's clear focus is to tell the story as directly and succinctly as possible. There is not a single artistic flourish, no extraneous shot; every single element is used sparingly and to great success. The dialogue, all spoken in Japanese, is superb, and the acting is fantastic throughout. Though the first hour is a bit slow, this is easily one of the best films of 2007, and one of American cinema's most important war films.
