3/7/2021 0 Comments Letters From Iwo Jima Summary
This second movie takes place entirely within Japanese ranks, with Japanese actors speaking subtitled dialogue, and whom the non-Japanese-speaking Eastwood presumably addressed through an interpreter.It is very different; despite some spectacular battle scenes, it is more muted, more restrained, even faintly anti-climactic.
Letters From Iwo Jima Summary Movie Takes PlaceLetters from Iwo Jima, however, sticks mostly and grimly to the action on the island itself, pictured in a grainy near-monochrome, supposedly summoned up from a cache of troops poignantly unsent letters unearthed there by 21st-century researchers many years later. And he is extravagantly positive about the best qualities of the Japanese fighting man: tough, manly, courteous, good-natured. ![]() And the spectacle of Axis-power soldiers committing suicide in defeat is very different from that in, say, Oliver Hirschbiegels Downfall, about the Hitler bunker. Just as Nol Coward told us not to be beastly to the Germans, so Eastwood is suggesting something similar with the Japanese. It was confined, not by political correctness exactly - who could ever accuse Clint Eastwood of this - but by a kind of Eastwoodian reticence, and a need to reach out to the vanquished enemy in very American terms. Kuribayashis men are finally reduced to tears by a letter found on a dead GI from his mom, realising that she is no different from their mothers. When some of the troops talked about their home towns, I found myself digging my nails into my palms with anticipation. The terrible denouement of Japans second world war - the great defeat to which this is leading - is not alluded to and yet this unthinkable nightmare is surely one thing which colours Eastwoods tribute to the fallen enemy. His diptych is concluded with muscular conviction and decency, but it is subdued and respectful: a floral tribute presented at a celluloid memorial.
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