Letters From Iwo Jima

Happy New Years everyone! I have finally returned. My company gave their employees a whole week off. It was great. I slept all day. I caught up on some reading. I watched a little Trash TV. I even played some Nintendo Wii. I partied like no other. It was awesome. Haha I gave a shitty intro. Okay now on to the blogging.

Letters from Iwo Jima. I really didn't know much about this film other then that Clint Eastwood Directed it and the obvious fact that it is about World War II. Boy was it hard to find a theatre in LA that was showing this film. I guess it's more of an indie film. My brother, sister, and I had to catch it at the Arc Light Cinerama Dome out in Sunset. Tickets cost me 14 dollars. Freakin craptastic. I guess it was kind of cool; you get your own assigned seats. We were ghetto enough to bring in our own diet cokes. Hurray!

The film starts off in the present with the uncovering of thousands of letters of the soldiers who fought on Iwo Jima. Magically, the film travels back 61 years to the soldiers who wrote those letters. Among them are Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker who's only purpose is to survive the war to see his unborn kid; Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic champion; Shimizu (Ryo Kase), a former MP; and Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), he's awesome! These guys are the ones that stand out to me, but there are definitely more characters in the film. This is the untold story of the Japanese soldiers and their General who defended against the invading American forces on that island. Each character has their own story and in the film you get in touch with who these people really are. I really enjoyed this film. A picture that shows Japanese soldiers as human beings. One of my favorite scenes is when Baron Nishi speaks with the wounded American captive. True compassion between two human beings. Just awesome.