Letters From Iwo Jima - Page 3

Tino · 02-08-2007, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Crawford

You just don't know when to stop, do you?

Crawdaddy

I guess I'll just bow out of this discussion.

Patrick Sun · 02-09-2007, 02:19 AM

ABC had an interview with Eastwood last night, and they said that LfIJ had made $40 million in Japan alone, which was twice its budget. Did this film really only cost $20 million to make? That's amazing in this day and age (even if some of the costs were leveraged by also making FoOF).

Gabriel>P · 02-09-2007, 04:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Crawford

That's you, not everyone is the same. Perhaps, it's because I give the filmmaker more latitude as to how they film their movie in a cinematography sense. As far as the CGI, if I pan every movie that had questionable CGI then the list would be very long.

Of course it is me, and sorry if I offended you in anyway. I guess I am just a fan of films with less blanketed look. As to the CGI. It wasn't just questionable. I usually let it slid, but it stuck out really bad to me. The charge up the beach was just really terrible to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick Sun

ABC had an interview with Eastwood last night, and they said that LfIJ had made $40 million in Japan alone, which was twice its budget. Did this film really only cost $20 million to make? That's amazing in this day and age (even if some of the costs were leveraged by also making FoOF).

The way Eastwood films I wouldn't doubt it. Pretty much a small cast, with from what I know without one who can be called a star outside the obvious. Short schedule, few locations/sets (many were interchangable), and no real huge battle sequences.

Robert Crawford · 02-09-2007, 07:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick Sun

ABC had an interview with Eastwood last night, and they said that LfIJ had made $40 million in Japan alone, which was twice its budget. Did this film really only cost $20 million to make? That's amazing in this day and age (even if some of the costs were leveraged by also making FoOF).

He also shot this film in 35 days which is his usual MO.

Crawdaddy

Robert Crawford · 02-09-2007, 07:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gabriel>P

Of course it is me, and sorry if I offended you in anyway. I guess I am just a fan of films with less blanketed look. As to the CGI. It wasn't just questionable. I usually let it slid, but it stuck out really bad to me. The charge up the beach was just really terrible to me.

No offense was taken, but I had to explain how I view films, since you quoted my previous comments and appear to question my logic.

Crawdaddy

Ken Chan · 02-17-2007, 05:35 PM

Liked this much better than Flags. The color palette worked and the CGI did not distract me.

I was trying to figure out which castle built for a dead man Saigo was reading about. Somewhere the Japanese wouldn't invade?

Michael Elliott · 03-26-2007, 10:23 PM

I finally got around to seeing this today. It's certainly a lot better than FLAGS, which I enjoyed but it didn't really connect with me until the final third of the film. I'm somewhat shocked at some of the negative reviews this thing has gotten since it was released because I thought it was one of the greatest films of its type.

A couple questions before I post my mini review but were the characters in this film based on the actual letters that were found in 2005 (at least in this film)? Also, there are certain posters who have an issue with the "kindness" of the Japanese soldiers. I'm sure we've all seen countless WW2 films told from the American point of view that shows how great the U.S. soldiers were when I believe there were countless reports of the opposite. With that in mind, I don't have a problem with Eastwood showing a different side of the Japanese soldiers. I'll touch on this a tad bit more in my review but I had a strange thing happen to my opinions on this towards the later part of the film when the General reads an American letter to his soldiers.

Over the past couple weeks I've been watching some of Frank Capra's WW2 documentaries and these certainly showed a different side of how brutal the Japanese soldiers were but again, I doubt every single one of them were evil. That's why I don't mind the movie showing what it did. It showed American soldiers helping Japanese soldiers. It showed American soldiers needlessly killing Japanese soldiers. It also showed Japanese soldiers helping an American soldier but earlier it showed them killing an American soldier needlessly. Seems pretty balanced to me.

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Clint Eastwood's depressing and thoughtful look at the battle of Iwo Jima told through the eyes of the Japanese soldiers. This companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers is one of the greatest war films ever made but it might be an insult to call this simply a war film because it's so much deeper. I hope I'm not putting too much hype on the film but I'd also call it one of the greatest Japanese films ever made and that's saying quite a bit since you've got an American director but I guess it shouldn't come as a shock since Eastwood has always been a fan of Japanese cinema and Kurosawa. I sat in the theater for 140-minutes just feeling complete sadness for the Japanese soldiers but something weird entered my mind during the first fight at Iwo Jima. As I sat there watching the Japanese soldiers get killed, it really didn't hit me the same as seeing an American soldier get killed. Later in the film there's a scene where the Japanese General (Ken Watanabe) reads an American letter to his troops. That scene really nails home what this movie was all about and it really made me feel differently about seeing the Japanese soldiers getting killed. On a technical level the film is downright beautiful to look at. The editing and visual style is quite remarkable but the key to the film is its heart. Most of the heart is gained from the brilliant performance by Watanabe. I haven't seen all of the Best Actor nominations yet but I find it rather shocking this guy didn't get a nom. His performance is right on the mark because he plays a human so well. Having to die for your country and handle it with grace yet understanding of the other side is pulled off extremely well by the actor. There's also some suicide scenes, which were extremely difficult and sad to watch and they reminded me of the Russian roulette scenes in The Deer Hunter and were equally disturbing. I must say it's a damn shame more people didn't see this film but hopefully it'll get a second chance when released on DVD.

Rob Foss · 03-27-2007, 05:40 PM

Michael's post reminded me of Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's (Cure, Pulse, Bright Future) comments about Letters from Iwo Jima. Reproduced below from the SF Bay Guardian for those interested:

Sagacious and audacious: Kiyoshi Kurosawa talks about Letters From Iwo Jima

The Academy Awards lumber toward us, and Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima is up for some big ones. In this week's Guardian, Taro Goto, Assistant Director of the fast approaching San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, writes about the reactions to Eastwood's film in Japan. Goto also recently interviewed the director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure; the Japanese version of Pulse; Bright Future) about Eastwood. While Kurosawa's love of the films of Don Siegel is well-known, fewer movie maniacs might be aware that he's also a great admirer of Siegel student (and star) Eastwood. When I interviewed Kurosawa around the time of Bright Future's release, he cited Mystic River as the most fascinating film he'd seen in some time, and confessed he'd only glimpsed Eastwood from "a ten-meter distance" when both directors had films premiering in the Official Section at Cannes, because he'd "been a fan of his for such a long time" that he "didn't feel like changing that."

In this written exchange, translated into English by Goto, both he and Kurosawa and Goto make some great points about cinema and how it relates to the world.

Taro Goto: You’ve been a fan of Clint Eastwood’s films for many years. What draws you to his work?

Kiyoshi Kurosawa: I think the greatest characteristic of Clint Eastwood’s films is that they revive the highly developed “form “ of early Hollywood cinema (say, from the 1940s) without ever relying on nostalgic elements. His talent is his firm conviction that cinema is storytelling as well as his confidence that with any story, however he tells it, he can capture the heart of the audience. As a result, he has continually tackled various types of stories, and never tells the same story twice. Also, despite his avoidance of any superficial novelty, oddly enough, his films look like no other before it. Therefore, his films always feel like something entirely new beyond just the mere level of storytelling.

I would say that right now he is about to surpass his spiritual and technical mentor, Don Siegel. Thanks to Eastwood’s guiding hand, it’s possible that cinema may be breaking away from a previously completed “form” and entering completely new territory. That’s a remarkable thing.

TG: It was rumored at one point that a Japanese may be asked to direct Letters from Iwo Jima. Did you ever entertain hopes of taking on the challenge of a project like this?

KK: Of course, if there were such an opportunity, I would’ve loved to take on the challenge. But for a Japanese the Pacific War is the most difficult story to tell. Living in Japan, we’re filled with so much contradictory information about that war that it would require a considerable amount of time just to ascertain the facts. Even with that information, I can’t say with confidence that I would be capable of treating it objectively.

TG: Did you have any expectation about Letters before seeing the film? After seeing the film, did the film meet those expectations? Did anything surprise you?

KK: It was exactly as I’d expected. I figured that Eastwood would go beyond a mere historical depiction of the Battle of Iwo Jima and portray “war” itself, transcending time and place. And that’s precisely what the film did.

TG: In recent years, there’s been a spate of Hollywood productions set in Japan—Lost in Translation, The Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift—but the depictions of the Japanese were rather unnatural. Letters from Iwo Jima, on the other hand, appears to offer a portrayal of Japanese that is believable and natural. But reenacting the speech, behavior and systems from that period is no easy task, and certainly a tall order for Eastwood, trying to direct his actors while working through interpreters. Both Eastwood and his cast have talked about how they focused more on conveying the emotions rather than worrying about technicalities. As a Japanese viewer, were there any instances that you found unnatural or implausible? Or was it a film you could easily see as a Japanese film?

KK: For me, the question of whether the Japanese characters in the film appear natural when compared to the reality of the time is basically irrelevant. It’s true that some have said, “No one in the Japanese Army at the time was capable of having such strong and clear personal opinions,” or “It’s unnatural for the two characters who’ve lived in the U.S. to be the humane ones.” But if one were to ask them what the true state of Japanese soldiers was at the time, they’d have to admit they really don’t know. The soldier played by Kazunari Ninomiya and the Lt. Gen. played by Ken Watanabe may appear far too contemporary, but that’s only in comparison to the old-fashioned and nostalgically made Japanese war movies to date. Letters from Iwo Jima at least offers what seems to me a picture of war far closer to reality than those earlier films.

TG: The notion of “gyokusai”—to choose an honorable death rather than surrender—is difficult for understand for anyone outside of Japan, but the film manages to avoid treating it in a sensationalistic way. How did it feel watching those scenes as a Japanese viewer?

KK: Needless to say, the idea of “gyokusai” is difficult to understand for Japanese as well. At the same time, I wonder if the principle of an individual sacrificing oneself for the good of the whole might be more universal than we think. You can find plenty of American films about heroes that do this. The truth is probably that people who don’t ordinarily think of such an act will, under certain situations, suddenly arrive at a “gyokusai” or “heroic” state of mind and take action. Depending on how it’s portrayed, it may look tragic, inspirational, or even absurd. In Letters, the character I found especially fascinating in that regard is the officer played by Shido Nakamura, who most directly embodies those human contradictions.

TG: Did you see Flags of Our Fathers? The two films of course look to capture the experience of the war from two different sides, separately. For you, was there anything that emerged by seeing the films side by side?

KK: Flags of Our Fathers was a tremendous film as well. It shows the process of war in a more sophisticated manner than Letters does; you could say it’s the more intellectual approach of the two. I might dare suggest that Letters examines the “battlefield,” whereas Flags examines the “postwar.”

TG: Alexander Sokurov portrays Emperor Hirohito in The Sun. While Western filmmakers like Sokurov and Eastwood tackle the state of Japan during the war, the Japanese film industry has produced such blockbuster war movies as Yamato and Lorelei that seem to glorify soldiers, reflecting a shifting Japanese society that’s even calling to remove Article 9 of the Constitution [which forbids the nation from maintaining an army, navy or air force.] How do you place a film like Letters in such an environment?

KK: Among foreign films that were released in Japan last year, Letters was ranked first on nearly all top ten lists, in addition to becoming a big box office hit. That itself is great news. And yet the sad truth about today’s Japan is that many of the same people who were moved by this film will also shed a tear as they watch some preposterous war-mongering film. To put it frankly, the antiwar and the pro-war, the liberal and the conservative, the right wing and the left wing all strangely coexist in the same person’s heart. That’s the typical Japanese today. Of course it sounds illogical. But as people’s values diversify and the template for communities is thrown into chaos, perhaps it’s unavoidable for a person living in modern society to carry some degree of contradictions within the individual. From that perspective, the reported polarization of the United States along the abovementioned oppositions seems to point to an almost unnatural rigidity in its people. That a film like Letters—which sagaciously accepts the chaos—was made in America is undoubtedly shocking to both countries. If this film can inspire Japanese to think more clearly and Americans to think more flexibly about matters, what a wonderful thing that would be.

Michael Elliott · 03-27-2007, 06:48 PM

Thanks for posting that interview. I would love to see this film in a Japanese theater with a Japanese crowd.

Quote:

His talent is his firm conviction that cinema is storytelling as well as his confidence that with any story, however he tells it, he can capture the heart of the audience.

Which reminds me of a Twilight Zone moment I had yesterday. I saw both FLAGS and LETTERS in a $3 a ticket theater where mostly older people are. In fact, each time I watch a movie at this place there isn't anyone under 50 unless it's one of the kids movies like HAPPY FEET. When I saw FLAGS there were several WW2 vets that I talked to. Actually, they started talking to me because they were shocked that someone my age was seeing FLAGS. Anyways, at the end of the movie they were all crying their eyes out because it certainly hit them hard.

Yesterday when I watched LETTERS one of the same vets were in there and I was curious as to how he would react to the film since he had fought against the Japanese in the war. At the end of the movie I wanted to pay close attention to this guy as I walked out of the theater and sure enough, he was crying his eyes out. I didn't get to talk to him this time but I overheard him telling his wife that he had never thought about the other side before.

That tells me Eastwood was certainly the right guy for the job and he got his point across.

Tim Glover · 03-27-2007, 08:56 PM

Echoing what Michael said, Rob, thanks for posting that interview.