One of the first major events in the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1941) was Japan’s conquering of the Chinese capital city of Nanjing. For the Chinese and their associates, the event started a new period of suffering, abuse and death. So brutal was the Japanese treatment of the Chinese soldiers and civilians that history speaks of the “Rape of Nanking”. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives; tens of thousands were raped.
Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death, in stark black-and-white, shows the atrocities of this particular part of the Sino-Japanese war while looking for the human stories contained within. This is how the film moves from episode to episode without settling on a single main protagonist, unless you count the Japanese soldier Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi). The film details Kadokawa’s start as a young soldier on whom the war takes a definite toll as it continues and he remains in Nanking.
We also meet Mr and Mrs Tang (Wei Fan and Lan Qin), who work in the Chinese refugee camp with the famous German Johan Rabe (John Paisley), as well as the beautiful Miss Jiang (Yiyan Jian). Some characters remain nameless, but feature repeatedly in the film. One such face belongs to a young boy, who reminds one of the child witness in Elim Klimov’s superlative anti-war movie Come and See and the red-clad young girl in Schindler’s List.
Chuan walks a fine line between showing and exploiting. He shows restraint when other filmmakers would be sentimental and heavy handed; the film is far removed from the sentimentalised, often melodramatic Taeguki (Je-gyu Kang, Korea) and Assembly (Xiaogang Feng, China), though it too owes something to Saving Private Ryan in its opening scenes of all out warfare. Many of its images seem to come from another world and seared into the eye: a couple of naked dead women carted away on a wheelbarrow; hundreds of Chinese soldiers executed en masse; an open window leads to an unexpected death. But Chuan never lingers and never romanticises.
Nor is Chuan a director with documentarian delusions. He is not there to tell any “true” story, much as it is based on actual documented events. He has an eye for angle and spatial arrangement, and a sure command of the close-up, a shot that is too often exploited for cheap thrills by other filmmakers. Here, a prolonged close-up demonstrates shock and grief; another, complete devotion to the Japanese cause.
City of Life and Death is harrowing viewing, expertly made. Sensitive viewers should steer clear. It is a powerful anti-war statement, graphically demonstrating how war dehumanises its participants, and is especially worth seeking out as Zhang Yimou’s award-seeking The Flowers of War (featuring Christian Bale, no less) prepares for global release in 2012.
Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death, in stark black-and-white, shows the atrocities of this particular part of the Sino-Japanese war while looking for the human stories contained within. This is how the film moves from episode to episode without settling on a single main protagonist, unless you count the Japanese soldier Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi). The film details Kadokawa’s start as a young soldier on whom the war takes a definite toll as it continues and he remains in Nanking.
We also meet Mr and Mrs Tang (Wei Fan and Lan Qin), who work in the Chinese refugee camp with the famous German Johan Rabe (John Paisley), as well as the beautiful Miss Jiang (Yiyan Jian). Some characters remain nameless, but feature repeatedly in the film. One such face belongs to a young boy, who reminds one of the child witness in Elim Klimov’s superlative anti-war movie Come and See and the red-clad young girl in Schindler’s List.
Chuan walks a fine line between showing and exploiting. He shows restraint when other filmmakers would be sentimental and heavy handed; the film is far removed from the sentimentalised, often melodramatic Taeguki (Je-gyu Kang, Korea) and Assembly (Xiaogang Feng, China), though it too owes something to Saving Private Ryan in its opening scenes of all out warfare. Many of its images seem to come from another world and seared into the eye: a couple of naked dead women carted away on a wheelbarrow; hundreds of Chinese soldiers executed en masse; an open window leads to an unexpected death. But Chuan never lingers and never romanticises.
Nor is Chuan a director with documentarian delusions. He is not there to tell any “true” story, much as it is based on actual documented events. He has an eye for angle and spatial arrangement, and a sure command of the close-up, a shot that is too often exploited for cheap thrills by other filmmakers. Here, a prolonged close-up demonstrates shock and grief; another, complete devotion to the Japanese cause.
City of Life and Death is harrowing viewing, expertly made. Sensitive viewers should steer clear. It is a powerful anti-war statement, graphically demonstrating how war dehumanises its participants, and is especially worth seeking out as Zhang Yimou’s award-seeking The Flowers of War (featuring Christian Bale, no less) prepares for global release in 2012.
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