Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking

I had never heard of the author and only heard of the Nanking massacre after watching "Men behind the Sun" (a movie about the horrors the Japanese committed in Unit 731) bc the same director made a movie about it.

This documentary is just as heartbreaking in a more subtle way. Not only did the author take her life but the witnesses testimony interlaced with footage are heartbreaking.

I suggest that you watch the documentary and don't listen to the negative reviews. The movie is called Rape of Nanking and that is the main focus and how the author got involved with the story and how the "forgotten" violence consumed and changed her. Also her widower and her parents are interviewed.

I have to admit the first time the cheesy song came one I fast forwarded, later on it the lyrics made it easier to bear the horrors of the nauseating savagery. There is a reason we don't "remember", and Iris made it her mission to cut through the mainstreamed silence.

It's depressing to think that this may be the only film that will ever be made about Iris Chang.

The film splices together actual footages of Chang's TV appearances, interviews with her parents, her editor, and people who helped research her book "The Rape of Nanking", with dramatized scenes of Chang (played by Olivia Cheng) laced with first person narrations (meant to visually integrate notes from her diaries or book which explains some of her motivations and psychological/emotional states).

The problem is that the director can't seem to decide if this film should be about Chang or about "The Rape of Nanking" (even though she has written other books...). We end up learning more about "The Rape of Nanking" than we do about Chang and the days leading up to her suicide (or her life prior to writing "The Rape of Nanking"). Strangely, her husband and friends are omitted from the film altogether (at least in the version I saw, which focused almost exclusively on interviews with her parents and editor), which simply adds to the feeling that you are watching something that might as well not have been made, because it tells you nothing that you do not already know.

What could have been a factual record that really detailed the horrific crimes committed against the people of Nanking, this documentary became a sappy, unfocused, maudlin, melodramatic and bloated opus about not only the war but of a young journalist's emotional bravery and her deep dive into these horrific events of the late 1930's. This double narrative hijacked the focus of what this documentary should have been. Worse, the important information that is there is watered down by this sappy over emotional young woman's point of view. Instead of allowing the horrible chapter to stand on its own, the documentary deteriorated into a personal journey about this young woman's "valiant" efforts and her own slight reasons for unearthing this sad tale.

Unlike other reviewers, I had no problem with the film as it stands: it accomplishes that it set out to do: portraying Iris Chang, beginning with her attendance at a display of photographs from that horrific massacre, and continuing with the process of her research, which included taped interviews with survivors, and discovery of documents of major importance.

That it incorporates footage and photographs of the unspeakably horrific massacre directly illustrates her discoveries, and follows her progress through the writing of "The Rape of Nanking," and sufficiently details her work on her next project -- the "Bataan Death March" -- for which she was making taped interviews when she fell ill and ultimately committed suicide.

It therefore accomplishes two purposes which need not be viewed as separate: providing insight into Iris Chang and her work on the history of the massacre, and in a sense ensuring that her work is not forgot by presenting that history, and the evidence she gathered, in her behalf.

To correct the other two reviewers: in addition to her parents, her editor, and survivors, her husband is in fact interviewed.

I agree that the song's lyrics can cause the viewer to wince. But the film is a powerful indictment and remembrance of the massacre, and a moving portrait of a person of measureless compassion who knew the worth of human dignity, even as it is probable that she was ultimately also a victim of the very horror she courageously brought to the attention of a forgetful world. That she must not be forgot is underscored by the fact that there is a statue honoring her at the memorial to the victims of the massacre in Nanjing.

The actual rape of Nanjing is an historical event that deserves a much better treatment than this. Ms. Chang made this about her, not about the citizens of Nanjing, so the "documentary" is more of a look at her inner torment than about the unfortunate citizens of Nanjing. So, watch this if you enjoy the exposure of inner torture of an individual author, but don't expect to learn the true history of the Japanese rape and torture of a city's people. You won't find that here.