H.Johnson
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,562
- Location
- Midlands, UK
I was in China recently and attended a screening of The City of Life and Death bu Lu Chuan. I had previously seen one of his previous films (Kekexili) and was impressed (I'm not a movie critic).
City of Life and Death deals with the 1937 Japanese attack on Nanking (known as the Nanjing Incident in Japan) that outraged of the world (and stimulated many Westerners to join the Chinese cause, e.g. the AVG) and has been controversial ever since. There are 'Nanking deniers' just as there are holocaust deniers. I had previously read The Rape of Nanking
The film seemed to me (my appreciation of it was perhaps hampered by my poor conversational Chinese) to be hard hitting (it has been reported that many of the 100 or so Japanese actors employed in the film were being treated for trauma and nervous breakdowns) and portrayed what I would describe as inhumanity and attrocities against civilians and disarmed Chinese soldiers alike. However, the people with whom I attended were intensely angry that it had played down these aspects and had taken the Japanese side to too great an extent. In fact there was something of a protest or demonstration outside the cinema - no small thing in China!
I was later shown photographs (apparently taken from Japanese archives) of what I can only describe as gratuitous (for sport) human butchery. I have seen films and photographs from the 'Death Camps' in Europe, but I can honestly say I have never seen anything like this. Intensely and profoundly disturbing, to say the least.
Anyway, If you get a chance to see this film, I would recommend it (as with Lu Chuan's other films). Lu Chuan is from Nanking, by the way, and I understand he used to be a soldier.
City of Life and Death deals with the 1937 Japanese attack on Nanking (known as the Nanjing Incident in Japan) that outraged of the world (and stimulated many Westerners to join the Chinese cause, e.g. the AVG) and has been controversial ever since. There are 'Nanking deniers' just as there are holocaust deniers. I had previously read The Rape of Nanking
The film seemed to me (my appreciation of it was perhaps hampered by my poor conversational Chinese) to be hard hitting (it has been reported that many of the 100 or so Japanese actors employed in the film were being treated for trauma and nervous breakdowns) and portrayed what I would describe as inhumanity and attrocities against civilians and disarmed Chinese soldiers alike. However, the people with whom I attended were intensely angry that it had played down these aspects and had taken the Japanese side to too great an extent. In fact there was something of a protest or demonstration outside the cinema - no small thing in China!
I was later shown photographs (apparently taken from Japanese archives) of what I can only describe as gratuitous (for sport) human butchery. I have seen films and photographs from the 'Death Camps' in Europe, but I can honestly say I have never seen anything like this. Intensely and profoundly disturbing, to say the least.
Anyway, If you get a chance to see this film, I would recommend it (as with Lu Chuan's other films). Lu Chuan is from Nanking, by the way, and I understand he used to be a soldier.
