jesse_custer
07-11-2007, 02:21 PM
Just watched this last night. It's definitely not better than Brick, The Proposition, Pan's Labyrinth, or Children of Men, but I would definitely put it in a top ten 2006 list.
My friend, who watched it before me, once joked that the reason it got so many four-star ratings is because it was in Japanese, implying that most critics and filmgoers think a foreign language is an instant classic-movie-making machine. I'm not sure if that is correct, but it certainly made me laugh.
At first I was afraid Clint would rip off Saving Private Ryan like Black Hawk Down. But even during battle sequences and suicide scenes, Eastwood still manages to maintain his straightforward directing style. I don't see how he makes it so engaging to watch. Any other director who tries to be this simple would probably make another boring or lamented film. Not Eastwood. He knows when and how to take it easy. Thing is, when he takes it easy, the scenery just kicks you in the face as the squinty-eyed bastard expects it to. Eastwood also mixes in a good combination of close-up and far-away shots, a technique that he has mastered since learning it from the God of such juxtaposition, Sergio Leone.
One thing that gets annoying about war movies is how they always recycle stuff you've seen a billion times from other war movies. This happens a couple of times here and there, most notably with the trusty "Hey man, help us out here; oh shit man! you're dead!"
But Eastwood pulls his trump card. I don't ever remember seeing a film that so objectively presents the enemy's viewpoint of the war, with the exception of Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron (but it seemed like Peckinpah would be the guy to defend Nazis, so whatever). We've always heard about the fearlessness of Japanese soldiers. Seeing it is another story. What's even more impressive is that the screenplay doesn't show all the Japanese as suicidal men. So the movie not only gives us something that we already know, but it also illustrates a deviation from the Japanese soldier stereotype.
Most of the acting is effectively simple, which isn't surprisingly because it's Eastwood behind the camera. However, Ken Watanabe reaches even further to deliver the best performance of his career. His facial expressions speak more than his lines, and a good comparison to this effect would be Chow Yun-Fat's endlessly malleable face.
So what keeps this from topping the other great films of 2006? Unfortunately, Eastwood, for some unknown reason, goes through Peter Jackson's syndrome from Return of the King and blacks out the screen in several pointless spots. Honestly, Jackson and Eastwood should let Jarmusch and Tarantino handle this technique and forget about it. And as visually pleasing as Letters from Iwo Jima can be, it doesn't really show us anything new from Clint or the war genre besides the overlooked viewpoint of the Japanese. Which isn't a bad thing, yet it doesn't register as groundbreaking as Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, or Lawrence of Arabia.
However, as slightly overrated as this film may be, there's one thing that I could never tire from, and that's the main theme composed by Kyle Eastwood (Clint's very talented son) and Michael Stevens. It's un-American and yet very Eastwood at the same time. Maybe that's the unusual marriage Clint was going for.
***1/2 (out of four)
My friend, who watched it before me, once joked that the reason it got so many four-star ratings is because it was in Japanese, implying that most critics and filmgoers think a foreign language is an instant classic-movie-making machine. I'm not sure if that is correct, but it certainly made me laugh.
At first I was afraid Clint would rip off Saving Private Ryan like Black Hawk Down. But even during battle sequences and suicide scenes, Eastwood still manages to maintain his straightforward directing style. I don't see how he makes it so engaging to watch. Any other director who tries to be this simple would probably make another boring or lamented film. Not Eastwood. He knows when and how to take it easy. Thing is, when he takes it easy, the scenery just kicks you in the face as the squinty-eyed bastard expects it to. Eastwood also mixes in a good combination of close-up and far-away shots, a technique that he has mastered since learning it from the God of such juxtaposition, Sergio Leone.
One thing that gets annoying about war movies is how they always recycle stuff you've seen a billion times from other war movies. This happens a couple of times here and there, most notably with the trusty "Hey man, help us out here; oh shit man! you're dead!"
But Eastwood pulls his trump card. I don't ever remember seeing a film that so objectively presents the enemy's viewpoint of the war, with the exception of Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron (but it seemed like Peckinpah would be the guy to defend Nazis, so whatever). We've always heard about the fearlessness of Japanese soldiers. Seeing it is another story. What's even more impressive is that the screenplay doesn't show all the Japanese as suicidal men. So the movie not only gives us something that we already know, but it also illustrates a deviation from the Japanese soldier stereotype.
Most of the acting is effectively simple, which isn't surprisingly because it's Eastwood behind the camera. However, Ken Watanabe reaches even further to deliver the best performance of his career. His facial expressions speak more than his lines, and a good comparison to this effect would be Chow Yun-Fat's endlessly malleable face.
So what keeps this from topping the other great films of 2006? Unfortunately, Eastwood, for some unknown reason, goes through Peter Jackson's syndrome from Return of the King and blacks out the screen in several pointless spots. Honestly, Jackson and Eastwood should let Jarmusch and Tarantino handle this technique and forget about it. And as visually pleasing as Letters from Iwo Jima can be, it doesn't really show us anything new from Clint or the war genre besides the overlooked viewpoint of the Japanese. Which isn't a bad thing, yet it doesn't register as groundbreaking as Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, or Lawrence of Arabia.
However, as slightly overrated as this film may be, there's one thing that I could never tire from, and that's the main theme composed by Kyle Eastwood (Clint's very talented son) and Michael Stevens. It's un-American and yet very Eastwood at the same time. Maybe that's the unusual marriage Clint was going for.
***1/2 (out of four)