Movie Review: 硫黄島からの手紙 (Letters from Iwo Jima)

*Spoiler alert!  May contain some spoilers.

Last December 14, 2006, my brother, sister and I were fortunate enough to watch Letters from Iwo Jima. Thanks to the special screening sponsored by the New York Observer and to my sister who woke up early and braved the coldest day in December to get the tickets, we got to see our Nino's movie before the scheduled screening on December 20.  Admittedly, my sister and I are Arashi fans and, needless to say, we wanted to watch the movie because Nino (Ninomiya Kazunari) was in it… even then, I was also intrigued by the movie’s story.  I didn’t get to watch Flags of Our Fathers, of which, Letters was the companion film, but Flags didn’t appeal as much to me.  With Letters, however, it was offering a different perspective -- one that I had yet to hear about and I was eager to find out what it would be.

Having spent my early years in the Philippines , I learned about the various atrocities of the Japanese as they occupied the country during WWII. It was so close to home that it was really hard to ignore.  And the Japanese did get a bad rap because of that war… even if they were not at all involved or didn’t want to be involved in it.   After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, numerous Japanese (two-thirds of which were Americans) in the West Coast of the United States were put in “internment camps”.  Newly released photos by some photographer, a courageous lady whose name escapes me at the moment, tasked by the government to take pictures at the camps show us how quickly the lives of these Japanese-Americans were changed just because they were of Japanese ancestry.  Whether they supported the war or not had little bearing compared to them just being Japanese. While the aim of the government was to have the pictures be proof of the “humane treatment” at the internment camps, our photographer’s pictures reveal a starkly deeper story.  She gave these people a human face, a story, and a depth that went beyond race and color into a sadness that would strike any human being at the core.

I think Letters from Iwo Jima does just that.  It gives our nameless “enemies” a human face and a story.  That while we may be on different sides of the battle, a human being is a human being… as Shylock, so aptly says in the Merchant of Venice, “…if you prick us, do we not bleed?...”  We are all the same.  A mother in the US is praying for her son’s safe return home, just us a mother in Japan is doing the same.  A father fighting in the war would always be dreaming of his children and when he is going to see them again – be he American or Japanese.  It seems so simple, both of these two camps just want the same thing, yet they still end up fighting against each other…

This is the dichotomy that, for me, was working in the movie.  While the seemingly opposing forces may ultimately want the same thing for themselves personally, they are torn by their other duty, namely, to their country.  Saigo, who so happens to be played by Nino and whose name so happens to mean “last” in Japanese, embodies this internal conflict.  All he wants is to get back to his wife and the baby daughter he has never seen. But then, he comes across to his other comrades as being unpatriotic and unwilling to fulfill his duty to his country.  But what is duty?  This was a question that was raised so many times in the movie.  When Saigo asks Shimzu, “Are we more useful to our country alive or dead?”  or when Baron Nishi reads the letter from the young American soldier’s mother telling him, “to do what is right because it is right,” or when Shimzu gets released from being a Kempetei because he didn’t think it was right to kill that family’s dog.  Even more directly, when Kuribayashi was asked by the wife of his friend, an American Army officer, if he would fight against him should Japan and America go to war.

But then, if I may add…what does it mean to be a coward?  Is it really cowardice to do what is right?  Or on the other hand, must bravery just mean dying for your country and leaving your wife by herself and your children without a father?  Of course, there is definitely some pride in being able to fulfill this duty.  And no doubt, every family who has lost a loved one who was fighting in a war to defend our freedom and way of life deserves to be proud of such an accomplishment. But what does war mean?  Must countless lives and families be torn apart because of it?  Is war really necessary?

May be, may not.  But the movie forces the viewer to ask this question and examine closely what may or may not be the answer.  And I think this is the power of this movie.  In making people think about the other casualties of war.  Not just of the ones on the field but all the other lives connected to them.  Actually, I think it may just well be in its ability to make people think about war itself: past, present or future.  I mean it is definitely an excellent movie, very well made.  And Ken Watanabe’s acting is definitely superb.  Nino and Ihara do a good job too.  Even the lighting and the cinematography, the nearly black and white color, highlighting the bleakness and murkiness of the situation just add to the factors that make it such a wonderful production.  

While some have criticized the film for being Americanized or inaccurate, I think it is still a brave production.  I think, too, the accolades the film has received and continue to receive are hopefully a testament to the same things I had written about here.  Again, there are some things that should not be overlooked, as some survivors from the Bataan Death March are well aware…but as A.O. Scott writes in the New York Times, war does have the effect of dehumanizing both sides to be able to effectively carry out their duty. 

And this is what saddens me most about war… it does bring out the worst in all of us.  What’s even more sad is that as the actual Letters from Iwo Jima (which the book and the movie are based on) reveal, these people we were fighting were just like us.  That from beyond the grave and similar to those pictures from the Japanese Internment Camps that just resurfaced, we discover that these people not only had a human face, but also a story and tells us of a universal sadness that strikes us to our core.