The Flowers of War

Honestly,I am not the kind of people easily being touched so deeply as to cry, and I didn't cry much during the movie indeed. I just walked out the movie theater,took a bus,got off the bus,bought a piece of bread, walked home while eating the bread,then all of sudden burst into tears.

Till now I still haven't walked out of it. There is so much to say, yet you don't know what to say nor how to say it. My only advice: you walk into the movie theater, forget whatever people said on the Internet, and just watch it with your own heart.

It is a great movie.

Someone wrote and I quote : "there was never a moment of this movie that will bring tears in someone's eyes". Whomever wrote this is not Chinese for sure! I started crying right after 15 minutes in the cinema .This whole movie's dialog is in Nan Jing Hua (local accent mandarin ). Sounds funny at beginning , but it's more easy to bring audience into the story with characters . Zhangyimou's movie are famous for bright colors and nice view since he use to be cameraman. But this movie is so much more than the visual! Color still pretty though, the paper shop, those QiPao, girls make-up , everything is pretty . I guess to ruin the beautiful things defines the tragedy. My friend who watched it before told me do not watched it in the morning , because it will upset you whole day. So I went to cinema in the afternoon, and I could sleep until 5 am this morning. Comparing to Zhang Yi Mou's earlier work like " hero", this is definitely his best work in 10years!

I don't know whether or not you've heard about the Rape of Nanking, but everyone should know about it. Having captured the Chinese city, Japanese forces committed a near genocide against the population and devastated the city. Zhang Yimou's "Jīnlíng Shísān Chāi" ("The Flowers of War" in English) focuses on a Nanking church where an American (Christian Bale) takes up residence and then must protect the inhabitants from the occupying forces. The inhabitants are the schoolgirls, and also a group of prostitutes. Eventually, everyone faces a moral dilemma.

There are some very ugly scenes of the occupation. The Japanese occupation of China and Korea has never gotten the attention that the Nazi occupation of Europe has, but it was equally brutal (as was the Italian occupation of Ethiopia). The main focus here is on the events inside the church, but there is ample focus on the atrocities committed by the Japanese. The movie does a very good job in every way. It is always important to tell these stories so that they never happen again. I very much recommend the movie.

PS: Bale had previously starred in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun", about a boy who gets separated from his parents in Japanese-occupied China. I also recommend that one.

Exquisite. Easily one of the most beautiful films ever made.

Moving, riveting, poetic, visually stunning, and dramatically gut wrenching.

Absolutely everything you could ever want a movie to be.

Poignant, poetic, full of beauty and life.

Not without moments of sentimentality, perhaps even, briefly, bordering on the saccharine. Still only those hardest of heart would be unmoved by this visual and emotional banquet.

If you are not moved by this film. You quite possibly may not be human.

An incredible mix of beauty and tension. Eye-dropping cinematography, heart pounding action. Yet full of life, humour and folly. Plays directly to your heart strings and plucks every chord with virtuosity.

In a just world this kind of film would be breaking box office records. But alas we prefer on mass to fix our eyes of adolescent spectacle. Consider how big the box office returns will be when Bale dons a bat suit this summer.

It's funny how a human interest story recreating events in history can be of so little interest to so many humans, the very ones who create history. It seems we would much rather gaze in wonder at our fantasies than contemplate our actions.

I urge anyone who loves cinema to see this film. It is a work of masterful craftsmanship.

I thought The Flowers of War was one of the best foreign films I have ever seen. Ignore all bad reviews, movies are not suppose to be perfect, there was a point of view, a story and a plot that were all displayed understandably. I have read a few reviews on this film and I have noticed most people saying ''Its too graphic'', it is a war film and the graphic effect was a great way of showing the audience the true form of war and the violence the soldiers/people experienced.

The cast was wonderful, I was amazed by the outstanding performance of the young Chinese actresses, I had goosebumps when they started crying or displaying any form of drama. Christian Bale was wonderful, I have always loved his acting and I still do, he portrayed John Miller's character the way I imagined it. He was capable of making me believe that he was an American without any doubt. Ni Ni (Yu Mo) was an amazing character and actress, I have knowledge that it is her first picture and she had shown amazing talent along with all the other Chinese actresses.

Over all I suggest you should watch the film, it is great and inspirational and extremely entertaining to watch.