Radio Lady Discusses: Clint Eastwood's movie "Letters From Iwo Jima" a sensation in Japan!

[Radio_Lady]

Ken Wattanabe in "Letters From Iwo Jima"

I'll be posting my review of this movie on Wednesday, December 20th. Meanwhile, perhaps you'd like to read this backgrounder from Bruce Wallace in the L.A. Times.
--
Japanese confront history with 'Iwo Jima'
Critics in the nation laud the U.S.-directed film...with a sympathetic view of Tokyo's WWII fight.
By Bruce Wallace, Times Staff Writer
December 18, 2006

TOKYO — The Japanese website for Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" opens with a pitch to go see a movie about "an island the world must not forget." But it is the Japanese who have always pushed memories of the terrible battle for that Pacific rock to the recesses of the mind.

Sixty-one years on, there are signs, at last, of a Japanese desire to resurrect the story of those men dispatched into the maw of a superior enemy force and ordered to die for a lost cause. Eastwood's movie about the battle of Iwo Jima sits atop the box office here after opening Dec. 9 to glowing reviews from Japanese critics, who lauded its sympathetic portrayal of soldiers being sent to almost certain death — and wondered why it took an American director to tell the story.

"People of my generation did not learn modern history at all in school," Kazunari Ninomiya, the young Japanese pop star who acts in "Letters," said after a Tokyo premiere that drew tears from some in the audience. Ninomiya plays Saigo, a baker cynical about the forces of empire that have conscripted him into the fight, driven only to survive to return to his wife and the infant daughter he has never seen.

"I've only read a few books and thought it was sad and terrible," he said. "I hope the movie will become an alternative textbook about that period."

To critics, however, substituting a trip to the cineplex for proper history lessons will teach today's Japanese only about sacrifices and suffering, without the context of the state-sponsored aggression that led those young soldiers to slaughter.

(snipped)

The problem is that such sentiments get distorted when seen from outside the country through the prism of current Japanese politics. The country's leaders are determined to revive a proud national spirit that they claim has been neutered by the legacy of defeat, occupation and American values.

(snipped)

Yet many here wonder why a subject with the moral thunder of "Iwo Jima" has never been the subject of a great Japanese movie. Furthermore, Eastwood built "Letters" around the thoughts and actions of Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, an extraordinary figure little known in Japan. Educated at Harvard and well aware of America's economic and technological superiority, Kuribayashi still devised a brilliant defense of tunnels and traps that turned Iwo Jima into a charnel.

"It's a Japanese trait to not create heroes," said Kiyoshi Endoh, head of the Japanese Iwo Jima Veterans Assn., who advised Eastwood on Japanese perspectives of the battle. "Japan was in total devastation after the war, so in understanding for the feelings of those families who lost members, we couldn't make any movies about heroes."

It may have taken an American director to lift that taboo. Until now, foreigners have criticized Japan for ignoring the war, while simultaneously criticizing it whenever a movie veered from the agreed narrative that requires every Japanese soldier to be portrayed as the brainwashed bayonet of an evil regime.

Even Eastwood's movie, were it not made by an American, would likely have been attacked for daring to show the humanity on the Japanese side.

"For 60 years, this has been a war we have tried to forget," said Yoshitaka Shindo, Kuribayashi's grandson, now a lawmaker with the governing party. "Of course we knew there was a war and that we lost it. But the only thing we learned was about the tragic deaths of civilians. The rest we put a lid on. We didn't talk about the details.

"But thanks to this movie, we can learn now, about the good things and the bad things," he said. "Then, we can go on."
---------------------------------------------------
Full article at link:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-fg-iwojima18dec18,0,7409296.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Suich]

1. I look forward to reading your review, RL!

I've always been a big fan of Eastwood, so this will be interesting.

:hi:

[Radio_Lady]

2. UPDATE: I am asking the moderators to lock this thread due to incorrect information.

Although I have seen a press screening of the movie "Letters From Iwo Jima," this film is NOT opening in Portland, Oregon on 12/20/06. The studio publicist told me that LFIJ does not have a firm date to open here, but it may not be until February.

I am embargoed from reviewing it until it opens here. Sorry for the incorrect information. You have plenty of options on this one, as it has opened abroad prior to this date. Please read more at:

www.imdb.com
www.rottentomatoes.com

Thank you for your patience.

In peace,

Radio_Lady in Oregon

[lavenderdiva]

3. self-delete

[lavenderdiva]

4. Locking

Locking at Radio_Lady's request