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This chapter examines Clint Eastwood’s 2006 films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima and how they differ in making the audience see the enemy. Based on the viewer emotions generated by the films, it argues that Flags of Our Fathers calls for our empathy with characters and Letters from Iwo Jima for our sympathy. Reading General Tadamichi Kuribayashi as a tragic hero whom the audience sympathizes with, it suggests that viewers gain a new understanding of the enemy, sacrifice, and nationalism from Letters from Iwo Jima. The essay sees Eastwood as a “minor utopian,” a director with the courage to question “history” and “truth” by showing us plural perspectives and, in the end, creating a vision of a better world: a world with combatants but without enemies.

This book examines two films directed by Clint Eastwood, both in 2006: Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. The two films are about the battle over Iwo Jima in 1945 during World War II. Eastwood touches us so deeply with his compassionate portrayal of soldiers, be they American or Japanese. Flags of Our Fathers traces the history of the men in arguably the most famous photograph in history, Joe Rosenthal’s “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima,” which in the West stands for victory, unity, and democracy. Letters from Iwo Jima traces the almost forgotten history of the ingenious defense of Iwo Jima by General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who turned a battle expected to last five days into the bloodiest battle of World War II, lasting thirty-six days. Wanting to deconstruct the “rainbow of feeling and thought” in Rosenthal’s photograph, Eastwood looks for the tragedy of the battle of Iwo Jima, which claimed 6,821 American lives and 19,217 casualties, the highest in World War II.

This chapter examines Clint Eastwood’s 2006 films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima in light of postclassical narration and multi-protagonist plots. Both Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima exhibit several characteristics of the multiple narrative film. Eastwood’s use of multiple narratives in both films is an example of a trend in contemporary cinema and also a continuation of his Mystic River (2003), but at the same time it represents a bold experiment of its own in postmodern war cinema. The essay analyzes the differences in the narrative structures of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima as well as their impact on viewers’ understanding.

This chapter argues that the motif of the haunting of the present by the past is essential to the powerful effect that both Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima convey. The films draw on the powerful symbolism of the voice that “sees” and the voice that causes you to “feel.” They both have an intense, spectral quality, relieving the unsettling and uncanny characteristics of war film. The war film frequently departs from the conventions of realism to convey the terrifying effects of a historical past that exceeds the representational range of realist forms, despite its long-standing reputation for realism and authenticity.

This chapter places Clint Eastwood’s 2006 film Letters from Iwo Jima in a Japanese context. In particular, it examines how the Japanese perspective influenced Eastwood’s choices in the making of the movie and how Letters from Iwo Jima was received in Japan. It considers how the film’s Japanese background, the controversies about the past, and current nationalistic public debates create grounds for caution. For instance, the gore and gruesome detail of war is downplayed to meet the preferences from audiences on both sides. However, catering to a Japanese audience does not mean adjusting in one direction, since there is no such thing as one Japanese perspective. The chapter discusses Eastwood’s movies in the light of four kinds of Japanese nationalism: peace nationalism, revisionist nationalism, “petit nationalism,” and “healthy nationalism”.

This chapter examines whether individuals, soldiers, or directors can change history or the course of war in relation to late-modern society by focusing on Clint Eastwood’s 2006 film Letters from Iwo Jima. In particular, it looks at the relationship between Eastwood’s narrative of war, Japanese Banzai warriors, and al-Qaeda’s contemporary suicide bombers. It also explores the issues of war, citizenship, and sacrifice within the context of modern identity. Drawing on Ulrich Beck’s concept of “risk society,” the chapter argues that our perception of future results informs the choices of the present. It concludes that “in a society where identity is something you choose, assuming the identity of war is also a choice”.

This chapter examines the question of humanizing the Other and understanding the practice of honor suicide by offering a reading of Clint Eastwood’s 2006 film Letters from Iwo Jima. It looks at Eastwood’s use of the suicide theme as a frame in which history, ideology, and cultural differences are brought “into a close microscopic view.” It also considers the role of the letters, the voices, and the framing of suicide within cinematic discourse. It views the suicidal sacrifice as a speech act echoing the letters found in the ground at Iwo Jima and argues that Eastwood’s achievement is to make the “Otherness” of suicide less unfamiliar and to bring the past closer to the present.

This chapter analyzes the films The Outlaw of Josey Wales (1976), Firefox (1982), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006). It argues that in Eastwood's model, the war is no benefit to men but only a nightmarish reality from which they can never escape and before which they fall silent. War is no longer portrayed as what makes a man “a man,” but rather as what can shatter him, leaving him in the isolation of one who can never relate to others the horrible reality of living in the chaos of the battlefield.

This chapter studies Clint Eastwood's films from the 1990s to the present. White Hunter Black Heart (1990) features the protagonist named John Wilson, whose personality and exploits are unabashedly based on those of filmmaker John Huston. In The Rookie (1990), Eastwood plays Nick Pulovski, a longtime cop trying to solve a string of auto thefts connected with a German mob boss. Unforgiven (1992) was among the first films reflecting Eastwood's maturity as a filmmaker, performer, and explorer of the American frontier myth. His later films include In the Line of Fire (1983), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Absolute Power (1997), True Crime (1999), Space Cowboys (2000), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Changeling (2008), Gran Torino (2008), Invictus (2009), Hereafter (2010), J. Edgar (2011), and Jersey Boys (2014).

This chapter examines Clint Eastwood’s 2006 films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, challenging the notion that they succeed in representing a universal humanism or as a critique of patriotism. Through an analysis of what it calls uneven narrative strategies, the chapter argues that Eastwood is caught in a dualist trap. It explains how these narratives—the national narrative, the narrative of friendship, the humanism narrative, and the narrative of the enemy—work in different directions and illustrate the challenge of representing warfare without reproducing the very dualities Eastwood tries to deconstruct. However, it also asserts that nationalism re-emerges and “that both films harbor hints of a proud, nationalist narrative,” noting that there is something distinctly noble about the Japanese general Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who insists on dying for his country, and something touching about the American soldiers sacrificing life and limbs as opposed to the politicians back in America, shipping off their sons to Harvard and Princeton.