Clint Eastwood: Letters from Iwo Jima

Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: Iris Yamashita, Paul Haggis, Tadamichi Kuribayashi and Tsuyoko Yoshido

Plot: The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it. -IMDB.com


Cast                                                                    Character 

Ken Watanabe              ...                              General Kuribayashi
Kazunari Ninomiya     ...                                    Saigo
Tsuyoshi Ihara             ...                                    Baron Nishi
Ryo Kase                     ...                                    Shimizu
Shido Nakamura         ...                                     Lieutenant Ito
Hiroshi Watanabe       ...                                     Lieutenant Fujita
Takumi Bando            ...                                     Captain Tanida
Yuki Matsuzaki          ...                                     Nozaki
Takashi Yamaguchi   ...                                      Kashiwara
Eijiro Ozaki                ...                                     Lieutenant Okubo
Nae                             ...                                     Hanako

Thoughts:

Iwo Jima, the name of a place where people from the United State and from Japanese will never forget, is a barren island near Japanese mainland where in February 1945, one of the most significant battles in World War II had taken place (Geoffery 1996).

"Over the course of five weeks in February and March, 1945, an invasion force of 100,000 Americans (two thirds of them U.S. Marines) fought 22,000 entrenched Japanese infantrymen. Only 1,083 Japanese survived the battle, while 6,821 Americans were killed and 20,000 wounded." (Ebert 2007)

The film opens up with Japanese Archeologists searching the tunnels of Iwo Jima in 2005. They find something. Cut to 1945 where Saigo writes a letter to his wife, Hanako, telling her, "This is the hole that we will fight... and die in. Hanako, am I digging my own grave?"

General Kuribayashi, played by Ken Watanabe, in his mind says he is determined to serve and give his life for his country. Saigo says the Americans can have the island since it's too hot and nothing grows there. The Japanese soldiers build fortifications to defend their island. 

General Kuribayashi wants the artillery moved to Mount Suribachi and to higher ground off the beaches. He studies the map at night. A superior officer doesn't like Saigo's practice shooting so he says he will make him clean the platoon's boots. The General disagrees with that saying he should clean their guns instead. The General is more practical and sympathetic. 

An Olympic gold medalist, Baron Nishi, in horse jumping is on the island. He is said to woo the ladies quite effectively. He talks to General Kuribayashi and they admire each other a lot following each other's work. Nishi bought his horse in Italy and was difficult to train since the horse was so head strong. Nishi feels he is the same way. He says they are a perfect match. 

At dinner Kuribayashi and Nishi discuss the war and Nishi says the best thing to do is sink the island to the bottom of the sea. General Kuribayashi says to forget about fortifying the beach and to start digging tunnels and fight till the end. 

"Poor nutrition and unsanitary conditions take their toll; many die of dysentery including Kashiwara. The troops begin using the caves. Kashiwara's replacement, Superior Private Shimizu, arrives for duty. Saigo suspects that Shimizu is a spy from the Kempeitai sent to report on disloyal soldiers." Wikipedia.org

Saigo complains about the food and reveals he ran a bakery in Omiya with his wife, Hanako. The Kempeitai took their food and metal for supplies for the war. In flashback to the time he and Hanako were together a military officer tells him he has been drafted for war. His wife cries and begs for him to be able to stay. They refuse politely.

General Kuribayashi is insistent on defending Iwo Jima until their last man is dead. The other officers believe General Kuribayashi is better suited being behind a desk than commanding the army. 

One of the officers shows a picture of American medics to the troops and says they should target them. 

The fighting begins as American planes drop bombs on targets and shoot at the artillery guns. Nishi finds his horse badly injured. American ships have left Saipan and are on their way to Iwo Jima. 

General Kuribayashi gives a speech to the soldiers and tells them each one of them is not allowed to die until they have killed 10 enemy soldiers. He says do not expect to go home alive. Soldiers bow and honor a Buddhist shrine. 

One officer is relentlessly cruel to Saigo probably because he is young and physically weak. An American soldier with a flame thrower takes out a machine gun nest. Many of the Japanese soldiers commit suicide by grenade blast. 

A soldier named Ito almost beheads Shimizu and Saigo but General Kuribayashi saves their lives. He doesn't see the need to kill good soldiers just because they left their post. Headquarters denies reinforcements and tells Kuribayashi to fight honorably and die for his country. After a Japanese soldier shoots an American they bring him in the cave and are ordered by General Kuribayashi to treat him. Nishi wants to question the American for information. He tells him he was in the Olympics and they seem to get along find despite both being enemies. The American says he's from Oklahoma and his name is Sam. 

Sam eventually dies from his gunshot wound and Nishi reads the letter out loud from his mother asking him to come home safely. Nishi kills himself because he goes blind in combat.  Shimizu reveals he thought the Americans were savages but the American's mother's words were the same as his mothers words. He wants to fight for the general and his country. 

Shimizu pretends to have dysentery and another soldier joins him in trying to escape to surrender. One is shot by another Japanese soldier who knows they will surrender. 

American Marines take Shimizu and another Japanese soldier and make them prisoners of war. They are both shot by an American soldier. General Kuribayashi says let that be a lesson to anyone who wants to surrender. 

The remaining men from Suribachi make it to General Kuribayashi. He tries to offer them water but he doesn't have any. A soldier gives Saigo a cup to dig worms to eat. He hasn't eaten in 5 days. That is how desperate they are. 

General Kuribayashi  hears over the radio children from his hometown singing a patriotic song for him. He tells Saigo to burn his documents and chest and that everything happens in threes which means he will save his life a third time. Saigo does as he is ordered. Fujita is ordered by General Kuribayashi  to behead him after he is badly injured. Instead Fujita is shot by an American sharpshooter. General Kuribayashi  asks Saigo to bury him so that nobody will find him. The General shoots himself. 

Saigo is surrounded by Americans and is taken to the POW beach. "Back in 2005, the archaeologists complete their digging, revealing the bag of letters that Saigo had buried, and open it. As the letters spill out, the voices of the Japanese soldiers who wrote them resound." (Wikipedia.org)

Final Thoughts:

I thought the film was great. It's sad to see General Kuribayashi not get to be buried the proper way but I guess those things happen. The film was balanced and sympathetic to both Japanese and Americans in the war as soldiers take orders whether they like them or not. I hope I didn't get any of the plot details mixed up or recalled them incorrectly.

Trivia:

Most of the young cast knew nothing about the incidents on Iwo Jima as it is not taught in Japanese schools. -IMDB.com

Works Cited:

Emerson, Jim. "Letters from Iwo Jima." Rogerebert.com. Chicago Sun-Times. Web. 6 April 2019. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/letters-from-iwo-jima-2007
Parker, Geoffery. “Battle of Iwo Jima.” History.com. Ed. Robert Cowley. A&E Television Networks. Web. 15 Mar. 2016. <http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-iwo-jima>.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498380/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_from_Iwo_Jima

Jan de Bont: Speed

Director: Jan de Bont
Writer: Graham Yost

Plot:

A young police officer must prevent a bomb exploding aboard a city bus by keeping its speed above 50 mph. - IMDB.com

Cast                                                 Character

Keanu Reeves              ...                Jack Traven
Dennis Hopper            ...                Howard Payne
Sandra Bullock            ...               Annie
Joe Morton                 ...                Capt. McMahon
Jeff Daniels                ...                Harry
Alan Ruck                  ...                 Stephens
Glenn Plummer         ...                 Jaguar Owner
Richard Lineback     ...                 Norwood
Beth Grant                 ...                Helen
Hawthorne James.    ...                 Sam
Carlos Carrasco        ...                Ortiz
David Kriegel          ...                 Terry
Natsuko Ohama      ...                 Mrs. Kamino
Daniel Villarreal     ...                  Ray
Simone Gad            ...                  Bus Passenger #1

Thoughts:

Speed is a great action movie that never slows down. The two lead Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock are good looking stars that are easy on the eyes. There is one part which is silly and impossible and that is the bus jumping a 50 foot gap in the freeway but that's Hollywood for you. Other than that one part the film works well. What the film does well is have great action in confined spaces like in a bus or on a subway train. In that sense it works well. It is still over the top but a fun ride nonetheless.

The bomb maker played by Dennis Hopper is our villain. He used to work for the LAPD. Jack and Harry volunteer to look at the bombs rigged to the elevator with the passengers on board. He asks Harry why did he take this job. Harry tells him 30 more years he gets a tiny pension and a cheap gold watch.

I think one of the best aspects of the film is the suspensful score by Mark Mancina. It always keeps you on your edge of your seat. They use effective canted camera angles to denote the crazy situations the terrorist bomber, Howard Payne, puts them through. This is seen in the elevator scene where the passengers all escape.

There is good handheld camera shots that intensify the story with there "you're there with them" feeling.

A bomb explodes on a bus and Jack gets a call from Howard on the payphone. He tells him on bus 2525 there is bomb on the bus that will arm at 50 mph and detonate when the speed goes under 50 mph. No one can get off the bus. He wants 3.7 million dollars by 11am.

In the highway scene they use a camera low to the ground which makes the speed look faster than normal which intensifies the scene. This is good cinematography at work.

Jack tells the bus driver there is bomb on the bus and to stay above 50 mph. Harry thinks the suspect is a cop. So he digs in the files.

They get off one highway and onto another that is empty and under construction. They dodge people, cars and everything in sight for a tense ride. Harry has the other cops go through the police files to get a match on the suspect. He thinks he is drawing disability through a pension.

They get the driver off the bus since he was shot by a petty criminal on the bus by accident. Jack finds out there is a 50 foot gap in the freeway. He jumps the gap miraculously somehow.

After that he enters the airport runway to circle and circle to buy themselves some time.

Jack boards a cart that lets him look at the bomb under the bus. A rubber tire piece hits the cart and he has to grab the bottom to hang on.

As he recovers Jack is told by Howard Payne that the drop off is at Pershing Square to offload his money at the trashcan.

They can unload the passengers since they found the signal and loop the video over and over for a course of a minute.

The bomb blows up with no one inside. Everyone is safe except Helen who died. Annie is accosted by Howard Payne and later he rigs her with explosives. Jack sneaks onto the subway train.

An ink bomb explodes and ruins his money. There is also a tracking device in the bag. Payne goes after jack. Both now don't have guns. He fights him on the subway car and a light approaches which Jack pushes Payne's head up and the light hits and knocks off Payne's head.

Final Thoughts:

Despite its star power the real stars of the movie are the soundtrack and the cinematography. It's a tense ride, one not to be missed.


Works Cited:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_(1994_film)

Andrei Tarkovsky: Stalker

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Writers: Arkadiy Strugatskiy, Boris Strugatskiy and Andrei Tarkovsky

A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes. -IMDB.com



Cast                                       Character

Alisa Freyndlikh      ...          Zhena Stalkera
Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy. ... Stalker
Anatoliy Solonitsyn       ...    Pisatel, Writer
Nikolay Grinko             ...     Professor
Natalya Abramova       ...      Marta



The first thing I'll say is that I admire a Science Fiction movie without any special effects. That takes creativity and courage. I also like the rich colorful shots of nature. It can remind one of a Terrence Malick film in a way. "Stalker is visually quite arresting. Tarkovsky uses color to set apart the different worlds, filming the scenes set in Stalker’s home city in gloriously dismal sepia and those in the Zone in color." (Pridham) The Stalker has a daughter named Monkey. 

This is not the first time has been to the Zone. He has been there many times. He was offered a job says his wife. Stalker must like the excitement of taking people to the room that grants wishes. 

"They have a daughter together, a crippled girl named Monkey, who suffers from disabilities apparently brought on by her father’s repeated visits to the Zone. He has been recently released from prison for his excursions into the forbidden area, and she fears he will get an even longer sentence. The Stalker, however, feels his everyday life is already a prison. From the beginning, we see signs that he regards the Zone as an oasis in his gritty, down‐trodden life, as a salvation from the position of non‐entity in which he finds himself in the city. What we cannot be sure of is just how much his psychological bond with the alien space informs his explanations of it." (Pridham)

The Writer feels life is boring with its cast iron laws. He feels there is no Bermuda Triangle, no telepathy, no apparitions and no flying saucers. He says this world has laws that cannot be broken. He said The Zone was a product of some superior civilization. Alien perhaps. He says that God must be logical and boring like a triangle or holy trinity. He is immediately blasphemous but intelligent. He is probably bored with life, but his reason for going to the room is to get inspiration to write again despite being already successful. The Professor is a physicist so he must be smart to say the least. One's mind is scientific (The Professor) and the other is artistic (The Writer). There is a lot of rain in the movie because Tarkovsky said it rains a lot in Russia so it isn't necessarily an artistic choice. A police officer wears a helmet with an AT probably initials for Andrei Tarkovsky. There is an AK painted on the wall. I believe this may be the initials of Akira Kurosawa as he admired his work.

Stalker's home town looks cold, ugly and industrialized as oppose to the lush green natural setting of the Zone. When they enter the Zone it is green, natural and beautiful as nature always is.

Porcupine was a stalker who took people to the Zone for years is revealed. Porcupine went into the room and within a week became abundantly rich. He hung himself soon after.

It is revealed that meteorite landed there and maybe it had energy to cause wishes to come true in that special room. Whatever the case the area around the room is heavily guarded as wishes that come true can be curses in reality.

There is a great shot of a rusted old car overcome by grass and nature as if modernity and industrialization will lose to nature. It is highly symbolic and hinted lightly. When The Writer pulls at some plants the Stalker throws an iron pole at him. He tells him The Zone wants to be respected or else it will punish. The Stalker says it doesn't let bad or good people pass through but those who have lost all hope.

The room wants to be approached indirectly as if found by accident almost. It warned The Writer in an ominous voice. It demands and expects total respect as it is doing people a favor and not the other way around. The Writer talks too much and The Professor tells him he does. They bicker.

A fight between Sepia and colors take place as misery and joy try to fight as well symbolically between the men. There is poetry in the film, unsurprising as Tarkovsky's father was a poet. This must have influenced him deeply. The Stalker confides everything has sense and reason. The Writer brings a gun but is urged by Stalker to drop it. After all there is virtually no-one around.

After traveling through the tunnel they enter a room with beautifully synchronized shapes of sand. Despite breaking so many of Stalker's rules The Writer loves to philosophize about them and nature in general. He is a contradiction of sorts. One would think of a writer being reserved and quiet but he is neither. He asks what kind of writer is he if hates writing.

The black dog follows the men. The three men are in a room shot in a frame within a frame. The Professor uses a phone to call a laboratory. The Professor wishes to have a phone to brag to another scientist he is within a stone's throw of the room. The other scientists threatens to report him and call the authorities. The Professor wants to get even with him because 20 years ago the man slept with the Professor's wife. This is probably a part of the film that is inside The Professor's head. His innermost wish to brag at and belittle his co-worker. He said before to The Writer and Stalker his wish was to win a Nobel prize for researching the Zone.

The Writer puts on a "crown of thorns" to mock Jesus and to tell the Stalker he doesn't forgive him for all his poem reciting and making detours. Outside the room The Stalker tells the other two, "This is the most important moment in your life." Their most sincere wish will be granted if they enter the room. He tells them the most important thing is to believe. This may be a hidden language Tarkovsky was using saying faith in God gets you into heaven.

The Writer doesn't want to go into the room first as he feels it is shameful. The Professor brings with him a 20 kiloton bomb. He feels the room will bring happiness to no one and wishes to destroy it because it could get in the wrong hands. The Stalker asks, "Why destroy hope?"

The Writer says he sees why Stalkers never enter the room. They revel in all that power, mystery and authority. They want play God. The Stalker says his happiness, self-respect and freedom is all here in the Zone. He breaks down crying knowing what curses can befall men who cannot bear see themselves for who they really are. The Stalker says he just wants to help people.

The Professor disassembles the bomb and decides not to blow up the room despite all the evil it can bring into the world.

With no one entering the room the three men return to the bar where they met up. They bring back a black dog that followed them around to the bar.

His wife after finding out what happened tells Stalker he should pity them not be angry with them. The stalker tells his wife no one needs the room, it's all in vain.

The Stalker's wife talks about Stalker and explains why he is how he is to the audience breaking the fourth wall.

At the end Monkey, Stalker's daughter, moves glass cups on the table with her mind. It is believed she can do this because of the "radiation" of sorts that Stalker gets being near the room so much which Monkey gets exposed to.


Ending:

It's hard to imagine why someone would deny getting their deepest wishes granted, but to see yourself as you really are shows the ugliness and the realness of who you really are. Sometimes your deepest wishes are the most petty like with the Professor. If you wish that you want to cure a loved one of some ailment but instead get a million dollars this would cause guilt and could lead to suicide for seeing how selfish we really are. What I like about the film is that it's quiet and meditative. Shots linger for a while to give you time to digest what is going on. There are no special effects in todays terms or of the past as it doesn't need any. It would detract from this film if anything.
Style:

Like Tarkovsky's other films, Stalker relies on long takes with slow, subtle camera movement, rejecting the use of rapid montage. The film contains 142 shots in 163 minutes, with an average shot length of more than one minute and many shots lasting for more than four minutes.^[12]

Almost all of the scenes not set in the Zone are in Sepia or a similar high-contrast brown monochrome. -WIkipedia.org

"The Zone prefers to grant secret and half-felt wishes, rather than the wishes we think we have.The Stalker maybe wished, he thought and we think, for his daughter to be well and able-bodied. But when he entered the Room on his first journey there, he cured Monkey differently, leaving her infirmity in tact but granting her a strange and uncanny power instead.In this way the Zone is just the onrushing future, for which the approaching train is also a metaphor. The future does not precisely deliver what we want it to, but something else stranger and somewhat terrifying." by poliphilo on reddit.com

Hatem Krema says...

SPOILERS … What was the hidden concept ?? I think the movie Stalker with its strong symbolism can be interpreted in the context of the Soviet era when religion was brutally suppressed. “The zone”/religion is a place that provides a comfortable sanctuary from the material dull life, and is guarded from entering by the military/ communist authorities. It came to exist from a meteorite/ a heavenly message to earth. For the stalker/ the religious man, it represents home and comfort, although he always enters it with fear to make it/God angry. The zone/ religion has its own natural laws/miracles that defies logic, but you have to get along with. It promises a “room”/paradise were your innermost wishes come true. The road/ life work to reach the room/paradise is tough and requires guidance from a stalker/ religious man. The existence of the room/ paradise has been always challenged by science/the professor and philosophy/the writer, and despite that they try to explore the facts of religion, and have some understanding for it, they could not accept it at the end. Science/the professor was ready to destroy what he could not rationalize, and from the standpoint of the stalker/religious man, science/the professor and philosophy/the writer are completely ignorant despite their knowledge. The stalker personal life/ the religious man life is not materially fulfilling and may be disappointing. The daughter may represent the outcome of following religion blindly, the mind/body may be crippled to move freely but it may have sensitivity and mysticism not owned by others.

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2013/07/in-the-zone-an-excursion-into-andrei-tarkovskys-film-stalker/

Works CIted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/1wcute/a_question_on_the_ending_of_tarkovskys_stalker/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)

Pridham, Matthew. http://weirdfictionreview.com/2013/07/in-the-zone-an-excursion-into-andrei-tarkovskys-film-stalker/