Somewhere in the midst of mad campaigning, Martin Scorsese appreciation and cultural diversity, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences forgot that Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima was the best film of 2006. Letters was brought to the screen by the do-no-wrong creative team of Steven Spielberg, Paul Haggis and Clint Eastwood, the latter directing the film, and served its purpose beautifully as a companion piece to Flags Of Our Fathers. Letters From Iwo Jima actually goes one step further and outshines Flags Of Our Fathers, due to its freshness in concept and dynamic direction.

Letters tells the same basic story covering World War II, which is also in Flags Of Our Fathers, but with a pro-Japanese slant. The setting of the film is that the island of Iwo Jima is in between the American forces and the home islands of Japan, therefore the Japanese forces will do anything to prevent the island from falling into American control, and thus and providing a launching point for a full invasion. The story follows the points of view of several combatants, including General Tadamichi Kuribayashi and Saigo, a poor civilian turned soldier. The saddest fact of all, even beyond the powerful anti-war message, is how little the island of Iwo Jima meant in the end, to both the Japanese soldiers who were giving their lives in forced patriotism, to the Japanese Army, who in one amazing scene dismisses the general's desperate requests for reinforcements via a short "rejection letter."

The war scenes in Letters From Iwo Jima transcend the power of Flags Of Our Fathers and even the technically superior Saving Private Ryan, because of the fervent emotion behind every death. Soldiers and superiors fight honorably, some commit suicide in mad patriotic zeal, while others deeply reflect the futility of war, even in a dangerous time when such basic human qualities as fear and compassion are not allowed.

Eastwood directs Letters From Iwo Jima brilliantly, and with a touch of maturity and vehemence, the likes of which he never truly showed in past Oscar winners Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River. Naturally, by the time Eastwood is at the top of his game, the Academy is tired of awarding him, and last night awarded the inferior but still enjoyable crime thriller, The Departed as Best Picture. Some critics argue that Eastwood sentimentalizes war, and focuses too much on emotional manipulation. Yes, animals die--isn't that the worst a writer can do to manipulate the audience? But such criticisms are unfounded. War is an emotionally manipulative event and one cannot approach such a horror too objectively, or else the movie becomes as pointless as the war itself. Even the consequences of war, and the psychological toll it takes on those in power, and those following orders, are horrifying and explored in excruciating detail in this definitive anti-war movie. Eastwood directs a psychological horror film, a tale of human reasoning gone mad. It is a film less concerned with glorifying bravery than it is with asking hard but truthful questions that a few decades ago, just couldn't be fathomed by either side.

It's unfortunate that such an important film was mostly ignored at the Academy Awards in favor of more light-hearted fare. (Ahem, Little Miss Sunshine changed the world how?) Eastwood, 76 years of age, certainly didn't have to make such a challenging World War II film this late in his career. He could have rested, content that Million Dollar Baby clobbered the competition and gave him one moment of glory. But Letters From Iwo Jima was not a film about glory or honor--it was a film about humanity. A theme that has and probably always will go over many people's heads. Grade: A