Letters From Iwo Jima (HD-DVD/DVD Combo Format)
Picture:
B+/B- Sound: A-/B- Extras: B- Film: B-
Flags Of Our Fathers was issued late 2006 as expected,
with Letters From Iwo Jima
originally planned for early 2007 release.
When Flags was a surprise
non-hit, Jima was moved up and
became even more critically acclaimed, though not a huge hit. The films are an interesting co-production
between Clint Eastwood (directing both) and Steven Spielberg, both known for
strong War Genre works form TV to the big screen over the years. Flags
was a cynical, but important film about exploitation of the men who fight,
idealism, propaganda and asked nuanced questions about why we fight. The three men who tour as the men who raised
the flag never get their due.
Jima is an intersecting story (the
three from the first film show up here too) which tries to imagine what was
going on inside Iwo Jima itself, which the Japanese Imperialists had turned out
to have dug a headquarters into complete with trap doors and sleeping
quarters. Instead of a shallow portrait
of a bunch of angry, mean, killer fascists, but younger soldiers doing their
job for Hirohito to win against the “evil Allied” powers led by a general (Ken
Watanabe) who has a history with high society, but now finds himself facing
death.
An
obvious step after Tora, Tora, Tora
(1970), the film pulls no punches about Japan’s intents, but is also fair
without being phony about who was really behind the kamikaze mentality and how
fragile such fascism really is. Almost
totally in Japanese, it is a solid film too, though maybe more abstract in some
ways than Flags, though it takes
some more risks that usually pay off.
Like its
predecessor, I found the film good, but it still falls short of Eastwood’s best
films. Nevertheless, it is about
something important and resonates when WWII is discussed.
One big
problem is the problem of the Spielberg and Eastwood styles cohering. Starting with Schindler’s List (as Robert Kolker rightly pointed out in his
amazing latest volume of the ever-great book A Cinema Of Loneliness), the director switched from a style that
was about letting streams of light in to letting shades and measured bit of it
in. The bright light of the film
projector/a deity figure is subsumed by something comparatively more
complex. That is the style Eastwood uses
on both films, but he also adds more sepias while draining the color and the
result is very hard to rewatch.
Even with
the detail and depth the 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition offers for Iwo Jima, it offered nothing more than
the 35mm print had already and sometimes, the use of digital does not look
good, despite how limited the digital is.
The anamorphically enhanced DVD-Video side is not bad, but sometimes has
troubles with the detail and video black in shots. Tom Stern did the cinematography, though he
surrenders much to the digital intermediate.
The Dolby
TrueHD delivers some great sound moments like Saving Private Ryan when the sound kicks in, but this is still
often a dialogue-based film. The best
moments are of demo quality, for as long as they last. The standard DVD standard Dolby Digital 5.1
is not bad, but no match for the TrueHD by any means.
Extras
are on the HD side in this case and include "Red Sun, Black Sand: The Making Of Letters
From Iwo Jima" hosted by Eastwood, the original theatrical
trailer, "The Faces Of War: The Cast
Of Letters From Iwo Jima, Images From The Frontlines: The Photography
Of Letters From Iwo Jima, November
2006 world premiere at Budo-kan in Tokyo and November 2006 press conference.
- Nicholas Sheffo
