Cinema has always been one of the greatest mediums for bringing our attention to neglected historical events. The recent Made in Dagenham for example exposed the latent gender inequality that resulted in the 1968 Ford Motors strike. While somewhat fluffy, its makers nonetheless deserve credit for exposing the incidents wider cultural impact.
Now, director Lu Chuan takes a commendably staunch approach to an event that bore far wider significance in its sheer horrifying magnitude. The staggering brutality of 1937s Rape of Nanking may be somewhat unfamiliar to Western audiences, but remains a vital, stark warning of mans inhumanity to man. While not without its flaws, Chuans dramatisation of the events, City of Life and Death, is a hugely important work for bringing the dreadful events to the attention of a wider audience.
The most significant aspect of Chuans ambitious, big budget effort (only his third; made for a comparatively large $12 million) is how rigorously non-didactic it is. Its all very well for a filmmaker to be impassioned; its quite another for them to take a pragmatic eye with the material, making salient points about the wider umbrella of humanity, rather than judging individual factions within it. On viewing the beautifully haunting black and white vistas of City of Life and Death for the first time, its clear Chuans interests are rooted not in politics but emotions, in how individual races, armies and soldiers are grouped together in a dispassionate, godless universe. Its poetic, measured sense of distance is exceptionally well realised.
Chuans multi-stranded narrative begins at the point the Imperial Japanese Army broke through the walls of Chinas former capital, Nanjing, on December 9th, 1937. The horrendous events that followed over the next six weeks almost defy any notion of human understanding: systematic execution of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians; even more systematic rape and brutality; and unparalleled callous cruelty. Chuan refuses to flinch from the sickening actions of the Japanese soldiers, although he ran into criticism for one especially sympathetic portrayal: that of Japanese Sergeant Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi), whos repelled by the violence hes a party to, but even more disturbingly, comes to realise how death is merciful in a situation so awful.
Kadokawas story is one of several that overlap and interlock. Also involved is Mr Tang (Fan Wei), assistant to Nazi businessman John Rabe (John Paisley), who ultimately realises he cant protect his own family within the citys precarious Safety Zone. The personal grounding of Chuans narrative renders the emotional fallout of the massacre all the more distressing, transforming a potentially clinical portrayal into an eerie portrait of real people under duress.
There are issues. Chuan assumes the audience knows the context of the story, which lends a degree of immediacy but may risk severing viewers involvement. To this end, he relies on a series of explanatory title cards which flash on screen all too quickly, perhaps because hes eager not to break up the moving tapestry of the film itself. Consequently the intersection of different stories can often prove bewildering, threatening to distract from the films emotional power. Nevertheless, these quibbles seem unbelievably glib and trite when viewed as part of a story so important. Irrespective of its flaws, City of Life and Death is undoubtedly one of the most important films of 2010.
Overall Verdict: A deeply upsetting experience, City of Life and Death is nevertheless proof positive that cinema, away from its most glib tendencies, is an enormously powerful political tool in directing an audiences attention to aspects of culture and history they may not have otherwise considered.
Reviewer: Sean Wilson