City of Life and Death (2009)
(Nanjing! Nanjing!)
Country: CHI/HK
Technical: bw/2.35:1 132m
Director: Chuan Lu
Cast: Ye Liu, Yuanyuan Gao, Hideo Nakaizumi, Wei Fan
Synopsis:
The Japanese bombard and take the Chinese capital Nanking, and follow up with a massacre of the soldiery. There follows an uneasy truce with the civilian population, with atrocities initially held in check by the German backed diplomatic contingent.
Review:
The unspeakable acts of the Japanese sacking of Nanking, which all but amounted to genocide, are here given a softened, aestheticized, treatment by the producers, with black and white and a mercifully averted camera generally rendering watchable what ought perhaps to be unwatchable, or unwatched. Where you stand on this will depend on your point of view concerning desensitization versus commemoration, but there is no doubt that a great deal of skill and expense has gone into providing such a memorial, and does so by highlighting the human faces and qualities of Chinese and Japanese alike, so that the victims have names, so to speak. Whether future perpetrators in the Middle East and elsewhere will see it and be cautioned by it seems unlikely, however.
(Nanjing! Nanjing!)
Country: CHI/HK
Technical: bw/2.35:1 132m
Director: Chuan Lu
Cast: Ye Liu, Yuanyuan Gao, Hideo Nakaizumi, Wei Fan
Synopsis:
The Japanese bombard and take the Chinese capital Nanking, and follow up with a massacre of the soldiery. There follows an uneasy truce with the civilian population, with atrocities initially held in check by the German backed diplomatic contingent.
Review:
The unspeakable acts of the Japanese sacking of Nanking, which all but amounted to genocide, are here given a softened, aestheticized, treatment by the producers, with black and white and a mercifully averted camera generally rendering watchable what ought perhaps to be unwatchable, or unwatched. Where you stand on this will depend on your point of view concerning desensitization versus commemoration, but there is no doubt that a great deal of skill and expense has gone into providing such a memorial, and does so by highlighting the human faces and qualities of Chinese and Japanese alike, so that the victims have names, so to speak. Whether future perpetrators in the Middle East and elsewhere will see it and be cautioned by it seems unlikely, however.
(Nanjing! Nanjing!)
Country: CHI/HK
Technical: bw/2.35:1 132m
Director: Chuan Lu
Cast: Ye Liu, Yuanyuan Gao, Hideo Nakaizumi, Wei Fan
Synopsis:
The Japanese bombard and take the Chinese capital Nanking, and follow up with a massacre of the soldiery. There follows an uneasy truce with the civilian population, with atrocities initially held in check by the German backed diplomatic contingent.
Review:
The unspeakable acts of the Japanese sacking of Nanking, which all but amounted to genocide, are here given a softened, aestheticized, treatment by the producers, with black and white and a mercifully averted camera generally rendering watchable what ought perhaps to be unwatchable, or unwatched. Where you stand on this will depend on your point of view concerning desensitization versus commemoration, but there is no doubt that a great deal of skill and expense has gone into providing such a memorial, and does so by highlighting the human faces and qualities of Chinese and Japanese alike, so that the victims have names, so to speak. Whether future perpetrators in the Middle East and elsewhere will see it and be cautioned by it seems unlikely, however.