`LETTERS' TELLS A MOVING STORY.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

In the opening moments of Clint Eastwood's profoundly moving ``Letters From Iwo Jima,'' we see Japanese soldiers digging ditches along the beach of the Pacific island they'll be defending. ``There's nothing sacred about this island,'' one grunt complains. ``The Americans can have it.'' Another young man writes in a letter home, ``I feel like I'm digging my own grave.''

The reality that few of the 22,000 Imperial Army soldiers would be leaving Iwo Jima alive makes the holed-up defense of this tiny strip of land feel like Japan's version of the Alamo. In Eastwood's eyes, they are one in the same -- (predominantly) good men fighting vastly superior numbers and resources, resigned to the fact that they're doomed, but fighting anyway, with (for the most part) bravery and honor.

With ``Letters From Iwo Jima,'' Eastwood has attempted a rare thing -- sympathetically, with clear eyes, telling a war story from the point of view of a one-time enemy -- and accomplished something absolutely historic, namely, making two films in the same year about one battle, providing us with an all-encompassing view of the tragic waste of war.

``Letters'' possesses the same drained-of-color look that marked ``Flags of Our Fathers,'' but the movies' approach their stories differently.

``Letters'' has a concentrated focus, a linear narrative, an intimacy that comes with most of the action taking place inside caves and, of course, subtitles. Its storytelling is traditional, save for the radical fact that it asks you to empathize with the ``enemy'' as they fight the U.S. Marines trying to kill them.

``Flags'' examined wartime propaganda and heroism, and ``Letters,'' written by first-timer Iris Yamashita with an assist from ``Flags'' writer Paul Haggis, looks at these things, too, from different angles. Some of the Japanese maintain that their American counterparts are ``weak-willed'' and ``undisciplined.'' There's also the belief that escaping to fight another day is the path of a coward; suicide, by one's hand or by holding an untenable position, is seen as heroic.

Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi (an excellent Ken Watanabe), charged with defending the island with no naval or air support, knows otherwise. Kuribayashi lived in the United States as an envoy. He knows the Americans love their country no less than the Japanese and will fight, when told, just as valiantly.

To engage the Marines, Kuribayashi eschews traditional defenses in favor of an elaborate, imaginative use of caves and tunnels that transforms Mount Suribachi into a human anthill. Suribachi, the key to the island's defense, dominated the action in ``Flags.'' In ``Letters,'' we see the flag-planting from the Japanese perspective -- here, the Stars and Stripes is tiny and distant, as if Eastwood is again noting the relative insignificance of the event.

History lesson aside, ``Letters'' is a deeply humane look at the men asked to do something most of us couldn't even begin to understand -- basically, as mentioned at the outset, dig their own graves. The film gives us several noteworthy characters, but the one we follow most closely is Saigo (pop star Kazunari Ninomaya), an independent-minded young baker who has promised his wife that he will return to meet their baby daughter.

Through Saigo's eyes, we see the atrocities, the insanity and the random acts of kindness that come with war and feel the desire that beats in every soldier's heart -- to get back home to loved ones. It's a universal feeling, and with ``Flags of Our Fathers'' and now ``Letters From Iwo Jima,'' we understand it more deeply and directly than ever before.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

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LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA - Four stars

(R: graphic war violence)

Starring: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomaya.

Director: Clint Eastwood.

Running time: 2 hr. 21 min.

Playing: ArcLight in Hollywood; Laemmle's Monica in Santa Monica. Expands Jan. 12.

In a nutshell: Companion piece to ``Flags of Our Fathers'' details the universal desire of every soldier to come home. Profoundly moving and, taken with ``Flags,'' a landmark achievement in movie history. In Japanese with English subtitles.