The trajectory of legendary American actor/director Clint Eastwood s career has puzzled film historians and fans alike. The way in which his career began and developed hardly resembles any other American film icon.
Eastwood s began his road to fame with Sergio Leone’s neo-western classics A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and the Don Siegel films Dirty Harry, The Beguiled .
Most of his early films revolved around the recurrent theme of taking the law into one s own hands, fighting the corrupt, unjust establishment and the shallowness of the macho figure. He realized his vision in a cinematic and narrative style that was drastically different from even the most radical films of the 70 s and 80 s and collectively formed a vision of an unusual America that shares few similarities with the simple, moralistic one of John Ford, the godfather of all westerns.
High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider, and especially the The Outlaw Josey Wales were true revelations among the numerous, but ambitious, dudes he created through the decades.
It would take 21 years though for Eastwood to be finally hailed as a great auteur with the last great western Unforgiven (1992) that won him his first best director Oscar as well as the best picture of the year trophy.
Two remarkable works followed the success of Unforgiven : Kevin Costner’s A Perfect World in 1993 and the romantic weepy The Bridges of Madison County in 1995.
But for the next eight years, Eastwood s career appeared to be dwindling and his professional path looked no different than all great auteurs whose later works never live up to the heights of their earlier films.
Then came Mystic River in 2003, followed by his undeniable masterpiece Million Dollar Baby a year later. Not only did those two films redefined Eastwood’s cinematic persona, they also proved that a highly esteemed 77-year-old filmmaker is capable of make films that are superior to anything he created before.
This year s two World War II dramas Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima cement his reputation as one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of this genre and qualifies him to be a serious contender for the Greatest Living American Filmmaker title that Scorsese and the late Robert Altman have held for many years now.
After the massive, unexpected victory of Baby, Eastwood embarked on the Flags of Our Fathers (which will soon be released Egypt). It is an examination of the notion of heroism, American righteousness, propaganda and the meaninglessness of war and victory told from the American perspective, set around the famous Iwo Jima Flag Raisers photo.
Midway through the film, the veteran director decided to shoot a separate account of the same battle from the point of view of the Japanese, with an entirely Japanese cast and a Japanese dialogue.
Letters centers on the 1945 decisive battle between the American and Japanese troops to seize the Japanese Island Iwo Jima. The importance of the island lay in the common belief at that time that whichever side wins this battle would eventually win the entire war.
The film focuses on three protagonists: General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), the wise, warm officer in charge of the remaining troops; Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), the young husband whose sole concern is to return safely to his wife and unborn child; and Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), a traditionalist commander who believes that it s more honorable for a soldier to commit suicide than be killed in battle at the hands of the enemy.
A sense of doom pervades almost every scene of the film. In one of the earlier parts, for example, Siago, sitting in a trench, writes to his wife: This is the hole that we will fight and die in.
Kuribayashi knows that he and his men will soon meet their end. Nevertheless, he refuses to give up on his men and orders the artillery to dig in the ditches on higher altitude and fight to their last breath instead of committing ritual suicide.
We learn later that Kuribayashi spent many years in the US and some of his best friends are American. He understands and sympathizes with his enemy and doesn t underestimate the magnitude of the sacrifices his soldiers are willing to make; yet he s still loyal to his country (or the empire as everyone refers to it) and never doubts the purpose of the war or the moral caliber of his superiors.
Nishi, on the other hand, is a blind believer in his nation superiority. We see him lecturing his men about the weak, sordid nature of Americans and how Japan is bound to triumph at the end because they re on the right side. At the same time we watch the Nishi speak to a dying American soldier about his memories of America and the parties he attended with Hollywood stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.
These contradictions are typical of soldiers whose belief in the rectitude of their country s cause is a primary justification for their lives and their inevitable deaths.
Siago, on the other hand, is unburdened by his superiors beliefs and principles. What Siago represents is the pure human instinct to survive. The ideas of patriotism and his country s definition of honor are secondary to his will to live.
This leads to the central theme of the film: Is it cowardice for a man to value one s own life over his country? What exactly constitutes heroism? Is there any cause that is worth a human life?
Eastwood asks these questions subtly. In his battlefield, there are no clear-cut lines between right and wrong, good or bad. Men from both sides carry out countless atrocities while others cling to the last relics of humanity as they attempt to preserve their existence.
The film looks almost black and white; all colors and life are drained out of the Island except for splatters of yellow fireballs and crimson blood. There is also very little background music, except for the flashback scenes involving some of the men. Eastwood is only interested in telling the story. He never tries to flex his muscles and that s why he adheres to his classical narrative methods.
The parallels between the unequipped Japanese troops and the Americans in Iraq are obvious so are the parallels between Palestinian suicide bombers and the Japanese soldiers who blow themselves up for similar reasons.
The letters mentioned in the title refer to the unsent messages the Japanese soldiers wrote to their wives and families.
By the end of the battle, only 1,083 of the 22,000 Japanese men survive. At the end of the battle, all that remains are unfulfilled promises, and memories of the lives that could have been.
