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A movie about a Japanese World War Two captain rallying his troops to hold out against overwhelming U.S. odds after the end of the Battle of Saipan sounds like a typical tale of guts, gore and a glorious end.
Yet "Oba: The Last Samurai," set for release on Friday in Japan, is far from the usual war movie. It was filmed by two separate crews of actors and directors -- one Japanese and one U.S. team side by side -- a style not used in quite this way since "Tora, Tora, Tora" in 1970.
Moreover, the two teams rarely discussed how each was making the movie, and when putting it all together, found that the Japanese style differed vastly from the American.
"There was no consultation at all about how we wanted the movie to be filmed or what kind of cuts to do," said Hideyuki Hirayama, who won the 1999 Japan Academy Prize for best director for "Begging for Love" and directed the Japanese unit, while Cellin Gluck directed the U.S. team.
Gluck, a Los Angeles-based director who also was one of the script writers, said the filming style may have helped increase the drama of the finished movie simply because working without knowing what each unit was doing was akin to what a real war situation would have been.
"Except for the scenes obviously where he (Oba) was in the Japanese camp or the Japanese are in our camp, it was (entirely separate) and it worked better that way," said Gluck, whose previous credits include the Japanese remake of "Sideways."
"Because we had our own little drama. It was sort of like a monster movie where you never see the monsters -- there's an enemy out there but we never see them."
The movie, whose title in Japanese is "Taiheiyo no Kiseki" ("Miracle of the Pacific") is based on the true story of Sakae Oba, who holed up in the mountains of Saipan after the bloody battle, which saw 43,000 Japanese soldiers killed compared to 5,000 U.S. casualties in heavy fighting on the Pacific island and on nearby Tinian.
Yet "Oba: The Last Samurai," set for release on Friday in Japan, is far from the usual war movie. It was filmed by two separate crews of actors and directors -- one Japanese and one U.S. team side by side -- a style not used in quite this way since "Tora, Tora, Tora" in 1970.
Moreover, the two teams rarely discussed how each was making the movie, and when putting it all together, found that the Japanese style differed vastly from the American.
"There was no consultation at all about how we wanted the movie to be filmed or what kind of cuts to do," said Hideyuki Hirayama, who won the 1999 Japan Academy Prize for best director for "Begging for Love" and directed the Japanese unit, while Cellin Gluck directed the U.S. team.
Gluck, a Los Angeles-based director who also was one of the script writers, said the filming style may have helped increase the drama of the finished movie simply because working without knowing what each unit was doing was akin to what a real war situation would have been.
"Except for the scenes obviously where he (Oba) was in the Japanese camp or the Japanese are in our camp, it was (entirely separate) and it worked better that way," said Gluck, whose previous credits include the Japanese remake of "Sideways."
"Because we had our own little drama. It was sort of like a monster movie where you never see the monsters -- there's an enemy out there but we never see them."
The movie, whose title in Japanese is "Taiheiyo no Kiseki" ("Miracle of the Pacific") is based on the true story of Sakae Oba, who holed up in the mountains of Saipan after the bloody battle, which saw 43,000 Japanese soldiers killed compared to 5,000 U.S. casualties in heavy fighting on the Pacific island and on nearby Tinian.
