Guy de Fraumeni’s Hollywood In The Hamptons

Letters From Iwo Jima

In an industry so attuned to winning the top award, the movie makers tend to treat the business as a sport. For Academy Awards, Clint Eastwood has become the Preakness winner in the Sport of Sports. Already an Oscar winner, in 2004 he took an old work horse and finessed Million Dollar Baby to Best American Movie of the year, snatching it from Martin Scorcese whose expansive and expensive film, The Aviator, was considered a shoe-in. Now, with the spare, graceful Letters From Iwo Jima, Eastwood receives not only Best American Movie but, Best Japanese Movie as well, leaving Scorcese still at the gate cooling his fiery nag, The Departed.

In complete control of his contemplative and sensitive prowess, Mr. Eastwood decided to give voice and substance to the Japanese who fought for Iwo Jima as tenaciously as the Americans he exalted in Flags of Our Father’s, in their taking of the volcanic isle. That film had the powerful, award winning strength of Clint’s direction and it was produced by Steven Spielberg! It was not an Oscar pet as much as it was a Box Office disappointment. I hate to sound like a politician, although I lauded the film in my review, I wrote that it was not Eastwood’s usual directing-style and the audience might have difficulty grasping all the “production.” I had felt the big, heavy hand of the producer, Spielberg. I think Mr. Eastwood’s humanity led him to portray the point of view of the losing “bad guys.” He utilizes his keen, austere and old-pro moviemaking ability to create a stunning mind-haunter. By turning the cameras to the reverse angle from the bravery of the American military to the Japanese and their inscrutable culture, the battle comes full circle and provides a more complete picture to assist understanding the extent and full impact of its true horror. For that black sand bit of land, some 7,000 U.S. forces died and enemy losses were over 20,000. Letters From Iwo Jima pays deep tribute to every soldier and their families, everywhere.

Very few war movie conventions are sensed in Mr. Eastwood’s radically original exposition of the Japanese military who knew almost from the start that they were doomed. They were advised by their Imperial commanders that there would be no support for them to defend the hard, black-ash island, devoid of any vegetative screening as cover from the invading Marines. They had to dig a maze of tunnels into the mountainsides as bunkers for protection. Of course, gunboats blasted them with tons of explosives. The film doesn’t allow the power of the attack force to press your emotions to establish the humanity of the enemy. The director wisely digs deep into the Japanese mindset of military rigidity and its traditions and experiences. The Japanese actors speak in their language with total realism. Actors like Ken Watanabe, Tsuyoshi Ihara, J-Pop star Kazunari Ninomiya and so many others not known to us, give staggering, true and unselfconscious performances that reveals inner discipline and determined dedication as well as human failing. They may well be called upon to kill themselves for their emperor and country.

The U.S. Forces assumed that the tiny rock would be pretty easy. It did, in fact, take 36 days. This is amazing since the Japanese had little ammunition and supplies, almost no food and water and a confused chain of command. And, as with all battle combatants, there is with them, their constant buddy, fear.

With one fine, artistic stroke, Eastwood surmounts the stereotypical war movie with an account of battle that scrapes the glare off glory and by doing so, he dulls the zeal for heartbreaking victory. His lean, lean statement is bathed in a mature surety that produces volumes. It is a collective and massive sigh of collective grief.

The making of Letters From Iwo Jima was a risky venture: It’s filmed in a foreign language. It’s protagonist is the “enemy.” There are no name stars and it is essentially part and parcel of Flags of Our Fathers, which slipped at the box office. However, Warner Brothers had faith. Previously, they had to be badgered repeatedly by Eastwood for them to go ahead with Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby. They could not reject this one.

Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima is timely. We are engaged in a killing war with an enemy whose culture is totally unfathomable by those fighting them, just as the Marines in Iwo Jima fought only faceless and heartless deaths. Statistics get through to us from Iraq but, the actual realities are too blurred by ignorance, arrogance and distance.

GuyJean de Fraumeni is the producer/writer/director of awardwinning European and American feature films. He has been a judge at Major Film and TV award competitions, including the Oscars, the Emmy’s and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.