The nominees are:
- “Babel” (Paramount and Paramount Vantage) Written by Guillermo Arriaga
- “Letters from Iwo Jima” (Warner Bros.) Screenplay by Iris Yamashita, Story by Iris Yamashita & Paul Haggis
- “Little Miss Sunshine” (Fox Searchlight) Written by Michael Arndt
- “Pan’s Labyrinth” (Picturehouse) Written by Guillermo del Toro
- “The Queen” (Miramax, Pathé and Granada) Written by Peter Morgan
The winner is ... "Letters from Iwo Jima;" screenplay by Iris Yamashita, story by Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis. I've written already about how much, surprisingly, I loved "The Queen," but "Letters from Iwo Jima" was brilliant.
"Letters" is also so clearly not a Paul Haggis production -- for example, in the way that a scene in which a mother's letter to a captured American soldier is read by his Japanese captors, a scene intended to underscore the common humanity of soldiers on both sides of the conflict, is then saved from maudlin or treacly sentimentality by a scene that follows shortly after, in which a Japanese deserter meets his death in an event that is surprising in it's stark, youthfully callous murderousness.
(An interview with Yamashita on NPR's "Here and Now" is here.)
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