Letters from Iwo Jima

Nominated for Best Picture, Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima tells the story of the famous 1945 Pacific battle from the Japanese perspective, just as Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers looked at it from the American viewpoint. The earlier film interwove the battle footage with an uneven account of how a handful of U.S. soldiers were manipulated for political purposes back home, but Letters from Iwo Jima is more concentrated—there are no “life after war” stories here, if for no other reason than because few of the Japanese combatants survived. While the script obviously involves a substantial amount of imaginative reconstruction, it works well dramatically, centering on the experiences of four defenders—two officers and two foot soldiers—the most notable of which are the principled general (Ken Watanabe) assigned to mount the last-ditch resistance, and a  fresh-faced, sweet-tempered draftee (Kazunari Ninomiya). Eastwood presents the Japanese for the most part in a very sympathetic light, as men dedicated to their country but also acutely aware of the onus that's been put upon them. Taken together, Eastwood's two films represent a serious and sensitive reverie on the true nature of war—not as some strategic game but as a cruelly absurd and humanly devastating experience. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. [Note: DVD extras on this two-disc “special edition” include the November 2006 “Press Conference at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo” (25 min.), the 21-minute “making-of” featurette “Red Sun, Black Sand,” “The Faces of Combat: The Cast” character featurette (19 min.), a look at the November 2006 “World Premiere at Budo-kan in Tokyo” (16 min.), a four-minute “Images from the Frontline” montage, and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for this Best Picture nominee.] (F. Swietek)