Yesterday, I went to the movies with the guy I’m dating. We were trying to decide between 3 movies: The Pursuit of Happyness, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Letters From Iwo Jima. Overall, it was a good movie, but admittedly it felt like some of it was a little disjointed, but perhaps that was the idea? My date brought up a good point when he told me he was disappointed they didn’t mention the fact that they held the island for a few months. Time is hard to distinguish in the film, and as someone who doesn’t know much about the history, I got the impression they only held the island a few weeks from watching the movie. When he told me they held off the American attack for that long, I was really surprised.
Ken Watanabe was really good in the film as Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. Tsuyoshi Ihara was also great as Baron Nishi. I was glad they shot the film in Japanese, and subtitled it. There were some moments that were difficult to watch, but not because they weren’t good. I don’t like to give spoilers, so I’ll just say that overall, I liked the movie. I wished they did some things differently, and went into more detail with Ken Watanabe’s character, because he was interesting. They did show a lot of conflict within the Japanese military and its people, and I thought that was one of the facets that are probably not touched upon much when people make movies about wars. Instead of a pure “us against them” type of film, you can see that the enemy is not always what you think they are, and that your own team can cause you more pain than any enemy could.