"City of Life and Death," looks at the 1937 Rape of Nanking with a direct, unblinking eye, making it one of the most frightening, most stomach-twisting movies I've ever seen. Shot in black and white, which only emphasizes everything, it's mesmerizing in its power, even as it makes one's skin crawl watching man's inhumanity to man.
Writer-director Lu Chuan uses actors to re-create a few of the real people who were in the city during the Japanese atrocities. Soldiers killed more than 300,000 Nanking residents, half of the city's population, in a six-week span from December, 1937 to February, 1938.
Japanese soldiers held contests in methods of killing, speed of killing, pain inflicted before death, beheading technique and other ghastly topics. Rape was constant, with survivors often held captive as "comfort women" to Japanese soldiers. One of the worst atrocities of the World War II era, it still is not recognized in Japanese history books or by the Japanese government.
Perhaps this film is a moment of revenge. . . .
The main characters are Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi), a young Japanese soldier who is totally unprepared for this type of military experience; John Rabe (John Paisley), a Nazi businessman; and Miss Chiang (Gao Yuanyuan), a teacher at a nursery school. Rabe, who had political connections, even wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler, asking him to intercede, but was turned down. He later returned to Germany, survived World War II and wrote about his experiences in China.
Lu pulls no punches. For 135 minutes, one can watch people being buried alive, then the dirt over their heads is carefully tamped down, as if a flower had been planted. Live people are used as bayonet practice.
As the long-ago Holy Roman Repertory Company used to proclaim, "We didn't make any of this up. This is the past, speaking to you. . . ."
Which makes it a little discomfiting to drive home in a Japanese car.
City of Life and Death opens today
— Joe