  Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima director Clint Eastwood provides a fresh take on the 1945 battle.
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Frail, aging yet still as tough as nails, Clint Eastwood fixes the camera with a steely gaze and says of Iwo Jima, the setting for his two latest films, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima:
"It wasn't a place for sissies!"
Eastwood's face then softens and gives way -- slowly, a rising tide on a volcanic beach -- to a wry smile that burns like salt water on braised skin.
It is an extraordinary moment on the new two-disc Special Edition version of Flags of Our Fathers. Thanks to Eastwood's insights and an excellent lineup of other bonus materials, the new DVD enhances the historical and social value of the entire enterprise, even if this remains the lesser of the two films.
The Flags film, a joint venture of DreamWorks and Warner Bros., had been released in a disappointing bare-bones version in February; now the new version, out this week in widescreen-only, finally does the film proud. It is absolutely loaded with good extras, all well organized.
At the same time, Warners came up with its two-disc, widescreen Special Edition of Letters From Iwo Jima, which makes its DVD debut. This is the proper way to introduce what became the masterwork in the Iwo Jima lineup. It was the one that, defying the pundits who hyped Flags all year, garnered the four 2006 Oscar nominations, including one for best picture.
Like the Flags special edition, the Letters one is well appointed with thoughtful and thorough bonus materials that provide an historical as well as a filmmaking context for the stories.
If you have yet to see either, Flags shows the brutal 1945 battle in WWII from the American perspective, with scenes taking the story back home. That includes a cynical publicity campaign in which the famous flag-raisers became a tool for the nearly bankrupt U.S. government to raise money for the war effort. And to turn the souring public image of the Pacific campaign into a patriotic triumph.
Letters, in contrast, is a primarily Japanese-language film that tells the story of the battle from the Japanese perspective.
Both films were co-written by the much Oscar-nominated, Canadian-born writer-director Paul Haggis. In the case of Flags, he co-wrote with William Broyles Jr. from the book by James Bradley, son of one of the flag-raisers. In the case of Letters, Haggis co-wrote with Japanese-American Iris Yamashita.
The best thing to do with these two films is embrace them as one whole, each DVD reinforcing the other and completing the picture.
Better still is the other option: the five-disc box set called the Commemorative Collector's Edition. It is an outstanding value that combines the two special editions with a fifth disc containing the 2001 documentary, Heroes of Iwo Jima, narrated by Gene Hackman. Using original action footage along with contemporary interviews, it methodically tells the same story that is told as a drama in Flags.
The chilling bonus on this disc is the Oscar-nominated, 19-minute, 1945 propaganda film, To the Shores of Iwo Jima. Made and shown while the Allies were still fighting the Japanese in WWII, the short, filmed in colour by U.S. Government Office of War Information, takes you into the real combat. It also has the hyperbole that is missing, thankfully, from Eastwood's modern efforts.
The narrator in the propaganda film describes Iwo Jima as "the most heavily fortified island in the world" and warns: "Buried deep underground lay 20 years of Jap preparation for murder."
That reminds us just how fresh Eastwood's take on the famous battle is. His restraint and respect for the warriors on both sides of the conflict is extraordinary.
"This story moved me in a certain way," Eastwood says in the Flags intro. "It's a patriotic story about a whole generation of people who sometimes gave the ultimate sacrifice for their country. But how the audience is supposed to take all this is up to them."
He could say the same thing about Letters. Iwo Jima was certainly no place for sissies. Nor is a piece of history that calls for a propagandist, not now, not in the 2000s.
Stylish thriller, timely release
Crazy coincidence maybe, but Steven Soderbergh's The Good German arrived on DVD this week just as Soderbergh, and his Good German star George Clooney, stormed the beaches of Cannes.
Their new Ocean's Thirteen is the third and supposedly last instalment in their Rat Pack series. The Good German is a world and 60 years removed in story and style.
It is a retro-noir romantic thriller shot in grainy black-and-white in an original full-screen format. Those elements make it look like the real post-capituation newsreel footage of Berlin that plays under the opening credits.
Clooney, who looks like he could have lived in that era like a cousin of Cary Grant, plays a U.S. journalist arriving in Berlin in 1945. In the bombed-out city, he finds his former flame (Cate Blanchett), her new lover (Tobey Maguire) and much intrigue.
The Good German, based on the Joseph Kanon novel, is not riveting stuff in the modern- action sense but it definitely brings pleasure. Especially if you appreciate the stylistic flourishes that Soderbergh and his pal Clooney borrow/steal from a past era (think Carol Reed's classic, The Third Man). So it is a crying shame that there are no extras at all explaining their artistry here.
