 A Great American Director
Movie Review
by Harvey Perr
Letters from Iwo Jima
in limited release, expanding weekly
and
Flags of Our Fathers
released in October, 2006
Great directors do not make masterpieces each time out of the
gate. What they do is make a mark on the history of cinema, a mark that does not get
totally ignored but does sometimes fail to be fully appreciated at the moment it
should. Clint Eastwood has become, quietly and over a long period, one of our very
best directors. And he has done so by going against the grain of much contemporary
filmmaking. His is not the art of fancy editing or special effects: he has,
consciously or not, adhered to the formal classicism of cinema and has achieved, as
a result, an almost Fordian austerity and, like Ford, a melancholy respect for
simple human decency that owes something, perhaps, to his political conservatism but
which, in its humanism, seems downright radical.
This year, he has done a bold and beautiful thing; he has taken a
look at a World War II incident, the battle for Iwo Jima, from an American point of
view – “Flags of Our Fathers” – and then again from a Japanese point of view –
“Letters from Iwo Jima” – and has, like Steven Spielberg in his ground-breaking
“Saving Private Ryan,” removed from them all the gung-ho heroism of the classic
wartime movies we made during World War II and injected into it the awful truth of
the horrors of war. If he had done no more than that, it would be enough, because it
is such a crucial time in our history, a period when we desperately need to
re-discover the power of metaphor to put into perspective what happened then and
what is happening now. Of course, nobody really wants to see that, especially now
when we need it most, precisely because we are already overwhelmed by the
devastating effects of the war in Iraq. One can’t blame audiences for not wanting to
confront this tragedy. Even the distance World War II provides is not distance
enough. But attention must be paid Eastwood for being brave enough – and
unfashionable enough – to go there the way he has and for allowing himself to get
under the skin of the American soul, and, even more profoundly, the Japanese soul.
The task Eastwood has given himself is complex enough; that it looks so simple on
the screen is the evidence not only of Eastwood’s artistry but of his honesty. If we
cannot fully understand the beauty of these films today, when we should, we at least
should be grateful that they were made at all and count ourselves blessed that they
will be around for future study. It is hard to think of any other American films
made this year about which one could say as much.
If “Flags of Our Fathers” is the more accessible of the two films,
it is because the story – of the six men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima and the
exploitation of the three survivors who were sent back to the states as heroes in
order to sell war bonds – is at least, superficially, familiar to us. Also, it finds
humor in its ironies, anger at its exploitations, and pathos in the plight of its
heroes, especially in the tragic story of Ira Hayes, the Native American who comes
to realize that being in harm’s way on a battlefield is preferable to facing the
prejudices of his fellow Americans at home. The dignity that Adam Beach finds in
Hayes is one of the film’s great glories. The ensemble work – and the eloquent
casting of George Grizzard, George Hearn, Len Cariou, and Harve Presnell as the
survivors in old age – is testament to Eastwood’s sensitive way with actors.
And it is, finally, the more accessible, because it is the American story, and the
dramatic swell and sweep that comes flowing off the screen is so purely American in
its style just as much as in its observations.
By contrast, “Letters from Iwo Jima” is sullen and lacking in
exuberance, without much humor, without conventional plot and decidedly free of
sentimentality. It is like crawling through spidery caves, like plodding through a
sand storm in the darkness of night, like plunging into a pit which leads to Hell.
Death is everywhere. Why then, does it seem so connected to “Flags of Our Fathers”
without really resembling it? The rich starkness of Tom Stern’s monochromatic
cinematography, so crucial to the look of both films, is, of course, a visual link.
The metaphysical link is death. The Americans want to live. The Japanese, committed
to suicide rather than facing defeat in an unwinnable war, want to die. What is a
heart-stopping but mercifully brief moment of horror in “Flags” – the discovery of
Japanese soldiers in a tunnel, having grenaded themselves to death – is almost the
whole of “Letters.” The stoicism of its aristocratic officers, so beautifully
portrayed by Ken Watanabe and Tsuyoshi Ihara, is conveyed in the most vivid of brush
strokes. The fine line etching is devoted to the humble young soldier (memorably
played by Kazunari Ninomiya) who wants to survive, who wants to get back to the wife
he left behind and the child he has never known.
Eastwood’s work in this film has been compared to Kurosawa –
probably because, except for a few moments which take place in America and a passing
encounter with a dying American soldier, the film is in Japanese with English
subtitles – but it is not so much the influence of Kurosawa as it is the influence
of John Ford – the Ford of “They Were Expendable” – that comes most physically into
play. Of the two films, “Letters,” despite its dour tone, is the richer, the deeper,
the more poetic of Eastwood’s diptych. Clint Eastwood can now be indisputably
counted among our national treasures.
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