Clint Eastwood’s war film is one of the most faithful ever made on the subject

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This horrific battle, one of the most famous of the war, captured in colorful archive images, is also at the heart of the Iwo Jima Letters. Released in 2006 and directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Iris Yamashita, Paul Haggis and Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the film depicts the events from a Japanese point of view.

Namely, the Japanese commander-in-chief responsible for organizing the defense of the island, played by the extraordinary and admirable Ken Watanabe. The work was conceived as the second part of a diptych; The first was Memoirs of Our Fathers, which adopted an American point of view.

“You can really get a good idea of ​​what the fight was like from both perspectives”

A very interesting video interview that was published InsiderHistorian, John McManus, deciphers and analyzes scenes from war films and gives a final assessment of the work. Thus, he gives a very solid 9 out of 10 to Eastwood’s film, which is also one of the best in his filmography.

For him, the film depicts with great accuracy the elements of the battle, in particular, the huge system of Japanese tunnels on the island (which was no less than 27 km!), the weapons and the fortifications built by the imperial troops. rising sun

But what makes the Iwo Jima Letters so powerful, he says, is that they were conceived as diptychs. “What makes The Memoirs of Our Fathers and The Iwo Jima Letters a little bit special is that I don’t know of any other circumstance with a film that kind of portrays both sides in two different films that has this kind of companionship where you can really understand what that battle was like from both perspectives.” .”

Both the films were unfortunately not successful at the box office. Memory of Our Fathers earned only $65 million. The Iwo Jima Letters did slightly better, with $68 million. The fact remains that this diptych, on such a subject, is an extremely rare example in Hollywood cinema.

With great emotional power, Letters from Iwo Jima is a tremendous war film that stands at the height of its genre. Which we carefully place together with another war film that presents the Japanese point of view of the facts, but this time signed by a Japanese filmmaker: Kon Ichikawa’s extraordinary and terrible fire on the plain, which tells about the ordeal of the last Japanese soldiers, caught. between Filipino guerrillas and American troops.

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