2006/12/12
Clint Eastwood Makes a Huge Anti-War Statement With 'Iwo Jima'
FoxNews: "Clint Eastwood’s new movie, his second release of the fall, is called "Letters From Iwo Jima." It’s a masterpiece — no kidding — considering that it’s over two hours long, filmed in black and white and spoken almost entirely in Japanese by a nearly all-Japanese cast.
More importantly, "Letters From Iwo Jima" is the biggest, most propulsive anti-war statement to come out of mainstream Hollywood in years. It’s even more sharply pointed because it comes from Eastwood, long a Reagan Republican and probably considered by most Americans to fall to the right in contemporary politics.(...)
But what I think will make the difference for "Iwo Jima" is that it arrives just at the right time politically in this country. "Flags of Our Fathers" had a hard time finding an audience because people thought it was rah-rah patriotic. It wasn’t, but the marketing department had trouble communicating its sometimes ambiguous message.
"Iwo Jima" should be easy: War is hell. That’s it. And at the end of 2006, with soldiers coming home in body bags, this should be pretty simple to grasp.
Eastwood doesn’t mind if that’s how "Iwo Jima" is viewed. "All war is bad," he told me, "and it’s not a matter of Democrat or Republican. The parties are so screwed up right now."
So here comes Eastwood into the Oscar race for the third time in four years. The whole thing just got a lot more interesting, that’s for sure!"
More importantly, "Letters From Iwo Jima" is the biggest, most propulsive anti-war statement to come out of mainstream Hollywood in years. It’s even more sharply pointed because it comes from Eastwood, long a Reagan Republican and probably considered by most Americans to fall to the right in contemporary politics.(...)
But what I think will make the difference for "Iwo Jima" is that it arrives just at the right time politically in this country. "Flags of Our Fathers" had a hard time finding an audience because people thought it was rah-rah patriotic. It wasn’t, but the marketing department had trouble communicating its sometimes ambiguous message.
"Iwo Jima" should be easy: War is hell. That’s it. And at the end of 2006, with soldiers coming home in body bags, this should be pretty simple to grasp.
Eastwood doesn’t mind if that’s how "Iwo Jima" is viewed. "All war is bad," he told me, "and it’s not a matter of Democrat or Republican. The parties are so screwed up right now."
So here comes Eastwood into the Oscar race for the third time in four years. The whole thing just got a lot more interesting, that’s for sure!"
// posted by CN @ 11:14 AM 
