I went to see "Letters from Iwo Jima" today. It was a really depressing film. I don't know a huge amount about World War 2 and less about the Japanese campaign, so I guess I learned something.

In England they used to teach history strangely. They'd start with pre-Roman history for a year or two, followed by a couple of yrs of Roman history. They'd then jump forward to 1066 and all that, and work forward from there in 200 or 300 year jumps each year till the age of 16. If you were identified as a "science and math student" you could drop history completely at 14. Because I was a a science and math nerd (I still am I guess), my knowledge of history stops at about 1200 or 1300. The result was that I know very little modern British history (unless it ties into economics), so I find these sorts of films interesting, even if I take them with a pinch of salt.

This film sees the WWII American attack on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima portrayed from the Japanese point of view (and as such its in Japanese 90% of the time). It was a decent enough film, but given what I know about what the Japanese did to POWs during the war, I had a tough time rooting for the central characters.

There was something else I noticed about the film. Most of the time the film was stripped of vivid colors and vibrancy. The only time they appeared was when there were explosions or when we were looking at the American battle cruisers. I'm not sure why it was set up that way, but it was there all the same.