This Clint Eastwood Double-Feature Shows Two Sides of the Same War

In this regard, Letters from Iwo Jima picks up right where its older sibling ended, albeit while ditching that film’s lavish production values for a decidedly more intimate experience that strands the viewer right alongside Iwo Jima’s doomed inhabitants. The reason for this is tragically simple – because so few of them survived. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers stationed on the island, only 216 would be taken prisoner, the rest either missing in action or dead (often by their own hands). It’s a horrendous statistic that speaks volumes about the brutality of war, and it’s also one that was painfully inevitable. The Japanese may have had the tactical advantage, but the overwhelming superiority of their opponent meant only the Americans would emerge victorious, leading to one of the most pointless battles of the war. This sense of impending defeat underpins everything in Letters from Iwo Jima, resulting in one of the most nihilistic depictions of warfare in cinematic history. The iconic flag from its predecessor makes only a brief appearance, but its shadow looms large over every gruesome minute.

Letters from Iwo Jima is an unrelenting ordeal. The characters we meet are not heroes – they’re scared little boys who spend their days writing letters they know their intended recipients will never read. All of them, generals and foot soldiers alike, know they will die – the only question is whether they will do so with honor (a nebulous term that, despite its positive connotations, is arguably the cause of all their problems). The film’s guiding light, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), may exude the confidence of a classic wild west sheriff, but he’s under no confusion about his job. He’s not there to save Iwo Jima, he’s there to lose it more slowly, and his commitment to doing that whilst trying in vain to keep casualties to a minimum makes him easy to root for. At the other end of the spectrum, we have Private First Class Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a fictitious character whose universality makes him an effective representation of the thousands of Japanese soldiers who died at the behest of their unseen masters. In general, Letters from Iwo Jima does a commendable job of remaining authentic, and Eastwood deserves high praise for having the courage to present everything in Japanese (making it one of the few American-produced films not in the English language).

Clint Eastwood has never been known as the most ostentatious director, but Letters from Iwo Jima displays some of his most overt stylistic choices. For starters, his version of Iwo Jima is truly apocalyptic, full of ravaged landscapes and sinister labyrinths where the ghosts of the fallen continue to reside even in the modern-day prologue. It makes for an ugly aesthetic that – when combined with the intense sound design and muted color palette (the consequence of cinematographer Tom Stern desaturating the image so much that it practically turns black and white) – makes for a difficult film to sit through, even for those who admire its core tenets. A casual moviegoer might seek enjoyment in the Saving Private Ryan-inspired battle sequences (no doubt the result of having Steven Spielberg in the producer chair), but the fatalistic context Eastwood presents them with rejects the longstanding belief that action translates too vibrantly to cinema to allow for an anti-war film. In Letters from Iwo Jima, violence is not fun – it is the symbol of a nation that has failed its citizens. Never has death seemed so inescapable, and what a damning reality that is.

Why Do ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ & ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ Make a Riveting Double-Feature?

Despite taking place within touching distance of each other, there are no direct overlaps between Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, allowing them to be viewed as standalone pieces. However, it is only when they are seen together that their true power becomes known. A lot of terrible things happen in both films – many of which are committed by the characters we’re supposed to empathize with – but Eastwood never puts the blame on their shoulders. How could he? They’re just people, fighting in a war they barely understand against people they have no cause to hate… but orders are orders, and how is a low-level soldier expected to discern right from wrong when the future of their country is at risk? While Eastwood is willing to critique the nationalist tendencies of each nation, he never goes so far as to mock them, giving the film a baseline of compassion that should be a requirement for all like-minded films. No one on that battlefield is a villain. They’re just ordinary people doing what they’ve been told is the right thing, and that’s far from the only similarity they have.

The summation of this comes towards the end of Letters from Iwo Jima. A Japanese regiment shoots and captures an American soldier, but guided by a moment of shared humanity, they decide to patch him up. Despite their best efforts, he dies, surrounded by the very people who were nothing more than targets on the other end of his rifle until moments earlier. A lieutenant searches him and finds a letter from his mother, whereupon he reads it aloud to the battle-scarred soldiers nearby. It’s a very mundane letter, containing nothing that the thousands of other letters across Iwo Jima wouldn’t also have included, but that’s the point. Hearing the hopeful words of a mother who just wants her baby to come home safe – a mother who is identical in spirit to everyone else’s on this damnable island – is soul-crushing, and speaks to Eastwood’s driving motivation behind these films. The point he’s making is one that centuries of anti-war stories have already asserted, but the fact that such stories are still being told is exactly why it needs repeating. It’s a powerful scene in isolation, but as the centerpiece in a duology that has spent 272 minutes exploring this exact conceit, it’s absolutely devasting.