Nanking! Nanking! City of life and death
I was a little skeptical when introduced to the film Nanking! Nanking!.
No, I am not trying to downplay the fact that the Massacre was one of the darkest periods in modern China's history. But like any forms of media, documentaries and films may be appropriated to manipulate perceptions for whatever self-serving purposes, including nationalism. The Massacre was traumatic, to say the least, for those who lived through it. Why would anyone want to re-live this memory over and over again?
Hence, I thought it was one of those ostensible films again, to incite hatred on the Japanese, to remind the Chinese that they have walked out of the humiliated past, so on and so forth.
Nanking! Nanking! was not. At least it wasn't to me. It gives a "balanced" view here. (parenthesis used here because, what's really balanced in life?) What I meant was that at least, the Japanese-in-potrayal were people, with real and nuanced emotions, needs, thoughts. This is a departure from many documentaries in which the Japanese were devoid of human being-qualities. A Japanese soldier killed himself after letting off a father and son off the hook. The karayukisans (Japanese comfort women) shipped to Nanking to provide relief for rowdy Japanese soldiers and then left to die with STDs in truckloads. The psychotic Japanese commander who gave orders to the firing squard but couldn't watch the process. "Living is more difficult than dying."
Wonderfully artistic in total black and white, it sort of reminds me of Schindler's List in terms of cinematography and mise-en-scene. It felt real, but I don't know what is really real, because I hadn't live in that period. It's also a show that you can hardly finish watching without feeling even slightly moody. But it wasn't just seeing piles of corpse left on the streets like animals carcasses. It was knowing that all sides, human beings, victors and losers, Japanese and Chinese, everybody found themselves in some sort of cul-de-sac, in which choosing death really seems like the easier and humane option out.
High quality video on youtube (with English subtitles) here.