Mark Kermode - Letters From Iwo Jima

[@chrishiggins7166]

The film is well directed, well acted, emotional, captivating & terrifically paced making this A well worth it Clint Eastwood film. (94%) (4.5/5 stars) (positive)

[@billtdifferent9714]

why are you on every single kermode video 😂

[@tomsega]

Positive review overall. I wouldn't dismiss the dog scene as sentimental, it was intended to demonstrate the totalitarianism of Imperial Japan and their duty to follow orders without conviction.

[@DisasterArtist1997]

on of eastwoods grestest movies and 10 times better than Flags of our Fathers

[@BunnyMan456]

hmmm. wrong.

[@Gadget-Walkmen]

About what? What? Piss off with your nonsense.

[@tedstriker6646]

I think it was pointless. The war in the Pacific was really brutal, mainly due to the fact that the Japanese army slaughtered prisoners of war and broke every convention and rule of war. After a while Americans started treating them in pretty much the same way. So I find it bizarre that after all this time they revisit one of these battles and try to inject it with humanity and some attempt at reconciliation. The bottom line is that it is alrady behind us. Nobody hates the Japanese and they don't hate us. But the fact remains that those battles were pure carnage and a total war between two races. I think a much more interesting and edgy film would be to show the horror alone - you know, the genuine experience of those involved, without the attempt to sell a story of reconciliation. Reconciliation is already there, we do not need to become friends with the Japanese. If Eastwood's motivation is to make the Japanese feel better about themselves, I guess he succeeded - they do call him the best Japanese director. But my question is: what's in it for us?

[@zxbc1]

Ted Striker The movie doesn't need a point. I get what you're saying, but from a pure cinematic point of view, it doesn't really need to contain a message or purpose. It's meant to show a different perspective on the war, and it does it just fine. I don't think it's a great film even from that criterion, because it just drags on and as Kermode pointed out, contains sentimental schlock that doesn't really work. Btw, if we were to believe that art should be subversive, how about showing the true horror that the Asian countries suffered in a much longer war and occupation? Plenty of Asian films have attempted it, but it needs a proper American director to put a stamp on it and introduce it to American audience. There's been plenty of Hollywood films depicting the Holocaust, why not the atrocities in the Japanese occupied countries in Asia in WWII? How about the sheltering and amnesties provided to Japanese war criminals from the US side due to the greed to extract their scientific research and skills? As you said, the mainstream "relationship-building" treatment of war time Japan is tiresome and, frankly speaking, disgusting at this time of our culture. Americans don't get the uproar Asian countries get into when Japan expresses the tiniest bit of revisionist tendency, it's no surprise - they're basically complicit in it.

[@tedstriker6646]

zxbc I agree with you 100%.

[@dragons123ism]

+Ted Striker It's not about reconciliation it's about seeing war from an enemy's point of view and understanding somewhat their position and what they were doing and why and how the war was fought. I can't understand your position that it's pointless, but it could have been better for other reasons. I did find the way they did the hollywood thing of the main character surviving was annoying. How is he representative of the Japanese soldiers if he is a MASSIVE exception to their fate? It's really a way of avoiding confronting the audience too much and giving some good feelings in the conclusion to a tragic story and is a too make the audience member not feel too much the inescapable fate that is laid before you and you cannot escape. We substitute ourselves into the characters of film and will do our best to escape death and horror so a character that survives can be the funnel of these feelings and only present the extreme horror as an observation rather than a final conclusion which is far too confrontational.

[@tedstriker6646]

dragons123ism I think white people have been seeing everything from the point of view of their enemies for a very long time, and now need to start looking at it from their perspective. Jews who own Hollywood keep telling whites that they are bad. When will a Jew think whether his tribe is doing bad things? When will a black man think: hey, maybe it's not really white man's fault and it's us that really suck?

[@dragons123ism]

lmao