It is a grey and barren landscape that forms the backdrop for Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima (2006). The film captures the grainy sepia-tinted look of war films along with a panoramic vision that gives it an epic sweep. Released as a companion piece to Flags Of Our Fathers, it delves into the battle over the strategically important island of Iwo Jima, told from the Japanese perspective. The film, in Japanese, is shot primarily in California with a few on-location shots in Iwo Jima that give it an edge of authenticity, reminding the world of the thousands whose bodies still lie entombed in the labyrinth of tunnels that formed General Kuribayashi’s unusual line of defence.

The film, written by Iris Yamashita, Paul Haggis, Tadamichi Kuribayashi (the author of Picture Letters from Commander in Chief which provided the matter for the film) and Tsuyoko Tushido is an intersection between historical narrative and personal histories revealed through the letters of the soldiers and the officers.

Eastwood picks a few characters and develops their stories, making it a war about these men’s personal dilemmas in the face of trying situations. The charismatic General Kuribayashi, played by Ken Watanabe, who is the leader of this doomed mission; the suave Baron Nishi played by Tsuyoshi Ihara with his Olympic medals, prize horse and ‘Westernised’ ways; the gentle Private Shimizu demoted from the elite Kempeitai army to Saigo.... These are a cross-section of doomed soldiers on a suicide mission with the command to die only once they had killed at least 10 soldiers each.

Cinematographer Tom Stern captures the dust-covered faces and the claustrophobia of the underground labyrinth of tunnels and offsets it with the clear blue of the ocean. The haunting musical score by Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens is balanced by snappy sound editing by Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman with interspersed gunfire, radio messages, songs and moments of stark silence.

The film closes with the intermingling of many voices that are the individual stories of men who fought at Iwo Jima. Eastwood’s masterful handling makes it a tragically beautiful and haunting deliberation of the nature of war, bringing to light this story of one of the most bloody battles of World War II that the Japanese themselves forgot to include into their annals of history.