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It’s interesting to contrast City of Life and Death (南京! 南京!) with older Chinese films about the war. Other reviewers have already pointed out how humanized the Japanese characters are, and it’s certainly a far cry from the buck-toothed cartoon villains they’re portrayed as in early propaganda films such as 1965’s Tunnel Warfare (地道戰). On the other hand, Chinese films today can get away with much more in terms of graphic violence and sexual content than ever before, as a result of relaxed censorship by the SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film and Television). Consequently, the Japanese troops are actually far more brutal in this film than in most previous films on this subject, simply because more is shown, and what is shown is more realistic and unflinching.

The fact that actual professional Japanese actors (good ones, no less) were cast for this film to play the Japanese characters, and that those characters are more nuanced than in most mainstream Chinese films, represents a huge step forward. Yet, there’s still a scene where a Japanese officer throws a kid out the window. It made me think of Erich von Stroheim playing a Hun(!) in The Heart of Humanity (1919), though I’ve only read about that. So, uh, still some room for improvement.

City of Life and Death takes a lot of its cues from Hollywood WWII films, in particular Saving Private Ryan (in early battle scenes) and Schindler’s List (in the way tragedy and inhumanity are depicted, and in the choice to film in black and white). But if certain scenes seem overly broad or melodramatic to Western viewers, even in light of the Spielbergian influence, I’d wager it’s because City of Life and Death is actually a sort of hybrid of the Hollywood Oscar-bait Holocaust film, and of the Chinese “main melody” film. You can think of main melody films as films whose values and moral messages happen to match current government policies and propaganda narratives. City of Life and Death is a sort of semi-official main melody film, and it is the most accomplished example of that genre I’ve seen. At a purely technical level, it rivals anything from Hollywood, and the black and white cinematography is unbelievably good.

As a Chinese person myself, this film makes me optimistic about the prospects of commercial Chinese cinema in the global market. If a Western studio had told this story, it would have been told as the usual, self-congratulatory “heroic white people save poor helpless locals from the evil military regime” narrative (just look at the German film John Rabe, or the American film Nanking, for instance). It’s always nice when the locals finally get a big enough budget to tell their own damn stories for a change. On the other hand, the propaganda elements make me uneasy, and give me a feeling of being emotionally manipulated. If we take the documentary Nanking to be an American view of the story, then City of Life and Death seems to simply trade Nanking’s Hollywood tropes for Chinese ones (although it does make the American film look half-assed and lightweight by comparison). The story of Nanjing is certainly one that needs to be told, but I have a feeling we’ll soon be saturated with heavy-handed Chinese films about it in much the same way that Hollywood keeps remaking Schindler’s List over and over again. For better or worse, this movie may be a sign of things to come.

City of Life and Death (also known as 南京! 南京!) is beautifully shot, aptly structured and on the whole cinematically sound, but I find the film’s content most problematic.

Firstly, the film falls into the trap of the anti-war genre, where films mournfully portray the destruction and devastation that war entails, yet at the same time aestheticise battle scenes through cinematography and form, hence defeating the purpose of the message. Battles scenes simply cannot be both ugly and beautiful, less they meet with ideological attrition.

Secondly, speaking of ugliness, the film harps on the overall devastation too extensively, virtually begging viewers for their tears and empathy. Yes yes, one can argue that “that’s just what war is like” or “this is the only way to show how horrible war is”, but the horrors of the war are much better portrayed when used in tasteful length, such as in Hiroshima mon amour and Nuit et brouillard, where images of war are featured briefly to great effect. To overwhelm viewers with purpotedly objective images of the horrors of war thus appears fruitless and even exploitative. This is further evident from how the music always conviniently enters as though to punctuate emotional moments for us – just in case we miss them.

Thirdly, the film falls in various tropes, some of them in the similar Schindler’s List, with the man in war with a moral dillema trope constantly foregrounded. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but this viewer has come to really dislike such elements of the war genre.

As images and sound alone, City of Life and Death is an exemplary film, but as cinema and as a transmitter of ideology, City of Life and Death is neither insightful nor interesting.

My first film of the festival was City of Life and Death, which was absolutely stunning. Shot in black and white, the film looks gorgeous. Each shot could be a photograph. This is all in great contrast to the films subject matter, which is about the Rape of Nanking. The movie is relentless. The film opens with the Japanese army advancing on the city. There is a pretty exciting battle, which the few Chinese soldiers who remain in the city ultimately lose. And then come mass executions. And all sorts of other atrocities. We are introduced to characters, develop a rapport with them, only to have them die. There are lots of close up shots of peoples faces. These sorts of shots show up again and again in the film. People we are never introduced to, and who never show up in the film again, will be featured in this way on the screen for a few seconds. An attempt to humanize an event that has become a list of statistics? I think so. The two lead Japanese actors in the film both incredible to watch. The film ends, more or less, with a victory dance through the city. That whole sequence is one of the best things i’ve seen shot on film. I can’t praise this film enough.

Apparently there was some controversy in China over the films release: people thought the Japanese soldiers were too sympathetic. The lead in the film is a conflicted soldier. He’s the only constant through out the film. The audience is probably supposed to identify with him. Soldiers are seen playing with Chinese children and giving them candy. They sing and dance with one another. They joke around. This certainly does humanize them, but does it make them sympathetic? I don’t think so, because it doesn’t justify any of their actions. They are still raping and killing people. They are behaving like beasts, but they aren’t beasts they are people. This is actually what makes these sorts of events all the more horrific. Lu Chuan should be commended for not making the Japanese soldiers into caricatures.