Hollywood star Clint Eastwood said his acclaimed picture "Letters from Iwo Jima" aimed to show the futility of war, after its European premiere at the 57th Berlin Film Festival. The groundbreaking film, which is almost entirely in Japanese, depicts the pivotal wartime battle through the eyes of Japanese soldiers fighting American GIs. Another, earlier film, "Flags of our Fathers," tells the American side of the story.
It has been showered with praise and Oscar nominations in the United States and well-received in Japan.
Eastwood told a news conference after a press screening that although the US-led war in Iraq had not directly inspired him to make the picture, it was a reflection of the horrors such battles always carry with them.
"Whenever you do a war movie, it is very difficult to not find comparisons to what is going on now and what had gone on in past years," he said.
"I think every war has a certain parallel in the futility of it and that's one of the reasons for telling these stories -- they are not pro-war stories.
"The emotions of the mothers who lose their sons and the emotions of the women who lose their husbands in war, it's the same regardless of any nationality. And that's what I was just trying to show," the 76-year-old said.
He said "Letters" and "Flags of our Fathers" were a response to the war movies of his youth.
"I grew up in the war pictures in the 1940s where everything was propagandized. (In) all the movies, we were the good guys and everybody else were bad guys," he said.
"I just wanted to tell two different stories where there were good guys and bad guys everywhere and just tell something about the human condition."
He said the language barrier was not a problem in making the film.
"Emotionally you can tell when actors on on-key. You can feel when everything's right," he said.
"The language thing wasn't a problem. I just had to kind of put myself into telling the story. And I told the story from my point of view and my style. This whole story, the thing that attracted me to it was just the human element of boys at war."
Eastwood, who began his career as an actor in a series of iconic tough-guy roles, said he was proud that veterans of the battle appreciated the film.
"They were very curious about how the other half lives," he said.
"Now, 62 years later, it is easy to think differently about things than you did than when when you were fighting for your life on an island."
More than 20,000 Japanese soldiers and nearly 7,000 GIs died in the bloody battle on the Pacific Island in 1945.
Many of the Japanese troops committed suicide on the orders of their commanders so as to avoid falling prisoner to the Americans.
Kazunari Ninomiya, who played a young husband and father deployed on Iwo Jima, told reporters that the film had allowed him to gain an insight into his grandfather's generation.
"I discovered a Japan I didn't know," he said.
Eastwood said he was not concerned about whether he wins another Oscar this month.
"I'm just glad the picture is out there and whatever life it has beyond that is fine by me," he said.
"Letters of Iwo Jima" is screening out of competition at the Berlinale, the first major European film festival of the year. It runs to February 18.
