Letters from Iwo Jima

Director Clint Eastwood sought the action of Japanese defenders in a film about World War 2 showing the Japanese views. It was a wartime tale of sacrifice and survival.
The ideas and characters are universal in this film. But the language was in Japanese which made it interesting that pure Americans were speaking Japanese.
General Kuribayashi played by Ken Watanabe was great. In the film his role as general was good because his plans were strategic not tactical. He wasn't as interested in winning the battle he was more interested in holding up U.S. invasion of Japan.
Eastwood and Stern(cinematographer) used the advantage of shooting with small cameras. With that you can feel the soldiers claustrophobic in battle.
Going on research this film was shoot in a real tunnel 100ft underground where Japanese soldiers had killed themselves during the war. Two third of the film was shot in actual mines, caves, and lava fields mountains. The good of having to be in a actual cave is that each of the characters felt what the soldiers felt from being in there.
One key factor of the film was the color black. An example to understand the effect of the color is to imagine yourself on a highway where theres no light until a car passes you and the car light shines directly on you. The only thing thats shown is the light and the object its shines on but everything else is pitch black. There were no extra lights. Another color factor was red. Red mostly symbolize blood, the color was on the military insignia and around the explosions and muzzle blast there was red.
The gruesome part was when the soldiers commit suicide by blowing themselves up with grenades.