Two excellent films

I have taken a bit of a break from studying this weekend to see two excellent films, Pan's Labyrinth and Letters from Iwo Jima. Both are the sorts of films that left me in a mild state of shock after seeing them. If I had to choose, I would say Letters is the better of the two.

It was not that apparent from the reviews I had read that Pan's Labyrinth is perhaps best described as a horror film, instead of just a violent and frightening historical/fantasy film. I don't usually watch (or enjoy) horror, so I was on the edge of my seat throughout. Nor am I used to such a gruesome depiction of European fascism in film. The fantasy sequences were not actually as large of a component of the film as I had expected. I woke up the morning afterwards with the images of the Pale Man stuck in my head.

I'm not sure what Clint Eastwood's narrative intent exactly was in Letters from Iwo Jima, but I started the movie extremely sympathetic to all the characters because they resemble Japanese people today. About halfway through, however, it became obvious how many of these soldiers sincerely believed in a violent religious ideology and a culture that venerated death, and I rapidly empathized less and less with the characters. I was glad to see that it refused to let the Japanese be the good guys, but did so in a very restrained way. It will probably do well in Japan, because it won't show audiences there anything that they don't already know. It's the best film I have seen this year, but it would be more bold for an American (or Japanese) director to make a film from the Japanese point of view depicting the atrocities committed by the Imperial Army overseas, rather than a film about the Japanese confronting the consequences of their own mistakes on their own soil.

A pet peeve of mine is the phenomenon of going to artsy theaters and having to listen to artsy people chuckle at everything in a movie. This used to happen a lot at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square, and it happened last night at the California Theater. Not everything in a movie is meant to be funny, and having to listen to people chuckle at every bit in a film trivializes the film for me. I really dislike hearing several people around me laughing when Japanese soldiers on screen commit suicide, or recite propaganda that they have been brainwashed into believing! It's revolting, and pathetic, but not funny!