I haven't done a movie review in a while (mostly because I haven't been watching many movies in the theater), so here's one.
I was really excited about seeing Letters From Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood's companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers. After having seen it, I'm kind of disappointed and I'm not sure why.
Letters watches like a typical war movie. The "bad" guys are stereotyped, and the "good" guys, for the most part, don't want to be there.
One thing that bothered me about the movie was that Americans who are not remotely versed in Japanese culture wouldn't understand the "honor suicides" that occured in the film. While Eastwood has said that he made the film for a Japanese audience, I would have hoped that either Americans knew more about Japanese culture (and the world in general) or there would be a more satistfying explanation in the film.
There are allusions to the atrocities committed on Iwo Jima, but for the most part are glossed over. I feel this was unfair, as the war crimes did take place, were glossed over in Flags of Our Fathers, and are significant to the battle's story. For the most part, the Japanese did not treat their enemies nicely. If Eastwood could have provided an explanation for that, I would have felt more comfortable with the overall tone of the movie.
I liked the music in the film.
One of the previews before Letters was for a film called Black Book that I'd like to see. It stars Carice van Houten as this cute, spunky Jewish girl who turns all femme fatale on the Germans in WW2.
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3 comments:
The Americans also were encouraged to view the Japanese as less than human - and consequently treated them badly, too.
Was that in the movie?
Yes. For want of a better stereotype, American Marines were depicted as tall, blond, blue-eyed, smoking war mongers.
Two Marines kill two Japanese POWs because they wanted to "get in the action" and not guard prisoners. (Actually, the average enlisted Marine in the movie was an insubordinate with a higher-than-average bloodlust)
If Eastwood touched on the war crimes that were committed by the Japanese in the movie in a way that Americans could empathize and understand the Japanese characters to a greater extent, the viewer would have learned more from the film, and more about why people do the evil they do. That was my point - not that all Americans are good and never do bad/stupid things.
I"m gonna see this one on Saturday, but I'm only mildly looking forward to it .. along with the concerns you mentioned, I still have a lingering bad taste in my mouth from the ending of Flags of Our Fathers, which pounded us on the head with its message and nearly ruined a fairly good WWII movie
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