The Rape of Nanking

It's a weekend and I get to watch of films again... I picked out a not so noticeable DVD on the store stand and went home with a smile. The DVD stored 8 films, all of it Chinese films with subtitles.

The City of Life and Death caught my attention, little did I know that the film talks about the Rape of Nanking, released last 2009 after 6 months of screening by the Chinese Film Bureau. It is directed by Lu Chuan.

The Rape of Nanking is one of the most notorious war crimes in history, taking place over several weeks during the Second World War from late 1937 to early 1938 when the Japanese imperial army captured the then Chinese capital. After entering the city the Japanese troops went on a period of sustained atrocities against the surviving inhabitants, raping, carrying out summary executions, looting and wholesale massacres of both POWs and civilians. Children as young as a day old are being thrown out of windows only to be caught by a bayonet of a smiling Japanese soldier. Nanking is reduced to rubbles. These atrocities are familiar to me as it also happened during World War II when Japan invaded the Philippines.

The 132 minute film has fictional characters interlaced with real characters (Mr. John Rabe, a Nazi businessman and Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary). It is a black and white historical feature which made it look like it came from the archives. Personally, it's good in black in white so that most of the scenes will not appear as gory as they are in full color.

The transitions were simple, excerpts of Mr. Rabe's diary served as a division from one week to another. I also like the mock celebration dance performed by the Japanese soldiers to celebrate their siege of Nanking, they are depicted as planting rice but it resembled driving bayonets into fallen soldiers.

In general, the film is a moving rendition as to what really happened in Nanking, the juxtaposed historical and fictional character served as a distancing between reality and history. The film is nothing short of political, but it is the not theme. What revolves around the film is the humanity in each of the character, the pain, the sorrow, the will to make sense of everything in the midst of chaos and the tendency to embrace anything that give's purpose. But in the end, death is always the easy way out.