Letters from Iwo Jima

I recently watched the movie Letters from Iwo Jima directed by Clint Eastwood. When I rented this movie I just assumed it would be a good gory war movie like so many others I had seen. To my surprise this movie was anything but, and showed people dying less than most other war movie you can see. On the average you have the one army running headlong into machine guns and mortar fire suffering severe casualties to try and accomplish their goal. In this there was one scene that showed people grenadine themselves, but this was different, it showed a different part of war. The thing I found interesting about this movie is how it wasn’t biased in the least. In general most war movies represent one side as being inherently good and the other as inherently bad. This movie based mostly on the Japanese side of the battle on the small island of Iwo Jima showed both sides in the same light. Towards the beginning of the movie they show how the Japanese could both civil and in some cases nasty. Later on after continuous attacks by the American air force you see their spirits change and they show how their culture influences them, at this point in the movie they know they cannot win the battle and they decide to die in a respectful manner according to their culture. The hold grenades to their chests and kill themselves. At this point in the movie I had felt one way about the people on the island, these people representing the culture, after this I felt completely different about their actions. Later in the movie you see more from the American side of the battle. Normally you would think that they are going to be portrayed as the heroes in the movie they will do everything right but that’s not how Clint Eastwood decided to portray them. They shoot a Japanese soldier waving the white flag, and then later they do the right thing by helping Japanese soldiers who have been injured. All together this movie told a great story and told the full story not just from one sided point of view. This was different than most other movies of this kind and I found that very refreshing.