Saturday, January 13, 2007

"Letters from Iwo Jima" clips





2 comments:

Mim said...

This looks like a beautifully shot film. The long shots of the beach and the ocean are awesome. I like the minimal use of color too.

Kudos to Clint Eastwood for showing the Japanese perspective and working with an all (mostly, I guess) Japanese case.

Too bad it's not playing anywhere near me. Now that I'm living in a red state, I can count on being able to see movies like Talladega Nights and Dukes of Hazzard, while being cut off from films like Letters from Iwo Jima and An Inconvenient Truth.

Mystery Man said...

I haven't seen the movie yet either, but I do love these scenes. (I posted these scenes for my Dad, actually, who now FINALLY has broadband. Hehehe...)

I love the first scene. Not a lot of subtext, not a lot of subtext that you can put into a scene like that, but it's touching. It establishes very simply what is at stake in his life, and we want to see him survive. And you sympathize with his wife and with him who is trying to sooth her nerves. But we get a little subtext. While he's talking to the baby, he is, in fact, talking to his wife.

The second scene made me think of MaryAn Batchellor's study on battle speeches here and here. He just lays it all on the line here. If we lose, we lose our homes.

The third scene I love because it's a good reminder to take time to build tension. I love the way they cut away to other locations on the island as we hear them say "Hold your fire." Love it.

-MM