Never Leave Unsent

Every so often Hollywood offers us films that serve as “a celebration of the human spirit” – and no other film genre lends itself better to this feat than the war film genre.

Coming out on the heels of the gone-too-soon Flags of Our Fathers (which I, unfortunately, didn’t see last fall) – and serving as that film’s companion – Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima has got be one of the most beautiful war films I have seen recently, if not ever.

I know it sounds like a terrible cliché, but what can I say…the film moved me…and it stayed with me long after I left the movie theater. This is why I didn’t tell you about it last Friday.

With battle of Iwo Jima, between the United States and Japan during World War II, as a background, and told almost entirely from the Japanese point of view, Letters From Iwo Jima follows the stories of Lt. Gen. Kuribayashi (The Last Samurai’s Ken Watanabe), an outcast among his colleagues for his Western-influenced sensibilities, and Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a disillusioned soldier determined to get back home to his wife and unborn child.

Eastwood – working from a script by Iris Yamashita (who co-created the story with Million Dollar Baby’s Paul Haggis) – delivers a breathtakingly shot film that is sad yet dignified and pertinent to these times of ours.

Watching these characters, especially Saigo, go through what they do, was gut-wrenching, but it was inspiring to witness such valiant displays of honor and love.

War has no useful results, but celebrating the lessons one can learn from it does.

I just hope that, unlike the letters that the soldiers depicted in Letters From Iwo Jima penned, these lessons aren’t lost for many years to come.

My Rating ****

Photo: Warner Bros.