wise man East

finally snagging a copy of Letters from Iwo Jima last weekend, i resolved to watch the great Clint Eastwood's two-barreled 2006 offering back to back. Flags of Our Fathers was sitting on my shelf for awhile now, gathering a bit of dust and begging to be watched. my pal time bandit saw it and went 'b-o-o-r-i-n-g.' i guess he expected another attempt to save Ryan's privates.

we all know about Saving Private Ryan and some elements are clearly recycled for this film (the visceral and bloody beach invasion, old men waxing poetic and looking back at the past, Barry Pepper), but they demand to be. plus with Steven Spielberg executive-producing - well, helloooo. that being said, its fun discovering the ensemble cast and what they can do - i picked out quite a few of them without reading the IMDB entry or the DVD insert - there's Robert "T1000" Patrick, Neal "Tin Man" McDonough, Ryan "I'll Always Look 19" Philippe, of course Barry "Blessed be the Lord, My Strength, Which Teacheth My Hands to War, and My Fingers to Fight" Pepper, and even poor Paul "I Don't Care About The Fast and the Furious 3, I Am Being Directed by Clint Eastwood, Dammit" Walker.

But the bulk of the dramatics go to Adam Beach, who's been here before with Nicolas Cage (Windtalkers), playing an(other) Indian whose unease in being labeled a hero was inversely proportional to his comfort in playing second fiddle to the white man, at least until showbiz and politics cross his moral lines, and he totally loses it. of the two other survivors of the second team that plants that flag as depicted in that immortalized Joe Rosenthal photograph, only Ryan Philippe's character (and author of the book which the film is based on) is grounded enough, despite being swept by the winds of history. but that's a valuable lesson in keeping your head about you and still feeling the earth underneath your feet.


on the other side of the coin, the Japanese point of view of that same conflict is explored in Letters from Iwo Jima. Ken Watanabe, the comeback artist of the last five years, agonizes with both pride and sadness as General Tadimichi Kuribayashi, the military tactician tasked to defend the chunk of volcanic rock before the Americans totally overrun Japan. Kuribayashi's injection of humanity in the face of war runs contrary to what made the Japanese military machine what it was then - brash, cold and calculating. this is a much better use of Watanabe's talents than in Memoirs of a Geisha. the young private Saigo (played by the revelatory Kazunari Ninomiya - a boybander! where's Wowie Cruz?) also presents a human face to what we would always assume would be the cruel army who occupied most of Asia for awhile and committed lots of atrocities. war brings out the best and the worst in anyone involved in it, and thankfully, both films chose to focus on the best parts.

it was really cool to watch these back to back, though Eastwood never cheats by recycling footage as some might do, and Iwo Jima is clearly superior to Flags. the clear winner here is writer/director Paul Haggis, who contributed much to both scripts and is clearly on a roll after his Crash victory.