Notes on "Letters from Iwo Jima"

The Clint Eastwood film, Letters from Iwo Jima, is a companion to his earlier film, Flags of our Fathers. This one is about the Battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective. Like many later Eastwood films, this one centers around violence, but neither romanticizes nor moralizes it. Not to say that it avoids mythologizing. Eastwood is all about the mythic. In this case, it is about the honor system of Japan and the cult of suicide. The narrative makes a distinction between the uses of the honor system to promote authoritarianism and conformity and the truely honorable death.

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