John Rabe

An important movie that must be watched. John Rabe was a hero to the Chinese people. He saved 200,000 men, women, and children from certain hardship, probable torture, and likely death. Yet after the war, he was condemned by his country, and lived a life of poverty, slipping into obscurity until his death. There has been too little written about this man. "The Rape of Nanjing" by Iris Chang does cover him in good detail in parts of the book. It's certainly about time for a piece to have been done about his efforts in Nanjing, about his life.

The movie is masterfully paced, poignant, and at times devastatingly sad - only able to hint at the atrocities the people of Nanjing must have faced. Yet the movie is ultimately a tribute to the power of few to change the lives of many, to the ultimate goodness of humans.

Many people knew about the Holocaust happened in Europe, but so few people knew about the massacre happened in Nanjing - capital city of Republic of China.

This is an excellent movie, too bad, it wasn't shown at many movie theaters in the USA. This could help people to know what the Japanese did to defenseless Chinese people during world war ii. The scenes are shocking and graphic, but that is what the Japanese soldiers did.

Even today, some Japanese still refuse to believe the appalling atrocities. This is an excellent movie for the event. Even though John Rabe was a Nazi member, but what he did he in Nanjing was heroic. He could be given the Nobel peace prize for saving over 20,000 innocent Chinese people.

This film is truly an international collaboration from actors all over the world just like those people who saved so many people in 1937. I highly recommend it.

"John Rabe" is a very glossy and well done film about the actions of Rabe and a few other foreigners in saving as many of the residents of Nanking as they could during the Japanese invasion. The airplane attacks and look of the film were absolutely great--and the film is well worth seeing.

I am very familiar with the story of John Rabe and used to teach my world history students about him and the Japanese destruction of Nanking (I have since retired). Much of what I'd learned were from the book "The Rape of Nanking" as well as several well made documentaries. So, I am NOT the typical person watching the story for the first time--I am a bit tougher to please. Because of this, I am much more critical that average and to me, the story was flawed because it actually seemed very sanitized. In other words, while the film DID show some of the Japanese atrocities, it didn't do much--probably because it would nauseate most viewers. BUT, by doing so, it minimized the evil that was perpetrated here--making the Japanese troops seem almost normal. It's rare, but I would have included much more blood and talked much more about the rapes and murder of children. Evil must not be minimized and here it just didn't seem as sadistic and wrong as the Rape of Nanking was.

John Rabe is a person that actually existed and this is a (bit of a) fictionalized version of what he and the people he were trusted on, had to go through. Now this is the German version of that story. There is another side to that coin. And that other side is called "City of Life and Death" and is made from the Chinese perspective. So I guess the truth is somewhere in-between.

But this fairly good made and has a strong character (actor) in the midst of it all. The story is really touching and involves a lot of bad things happening. But as written above, you will have sides that you will choose, whom you like and whom you don't. What it does have over the Chinese "version", is a main character you can hold onto.

I'd suggest you watch both movies in a double feature to get the whole package.

I have studied the man John Rabe through his diaries and other accounts of him from some of the main players such as Minnie Vautrin, Dr. Robert Wilson, Lewis Smythe, etc., and was expecting to see more of his actual work on the Peace Zone and Red Cross committees and perhaps a little less of the personal life--it's nice we got to see some of his relationship with his wife, but I think the movie would have benefited more from detail as to WHY he is so revered in China--he was so intelligent, kind-hearted, and seemed to truly love the Chinese people, and some of this is shown, as well as a little of his naiveté, but it needed MORE. For a character like Rabe you cannot just call him a benevolent Buddha and expect all the viewers to just know the details. I actually enjoyed Buscemi as Dr. Wilson, though I doubt Rabe would've sat still for the Hitler song, even while drinking! Wilson wore himself out, almost to death, in the hospital--where he would've found a moment for such a scene is a question. The one BIG issue that is appallingly inaccurate, to the point of being offensive, is the fictive character of Ms. Dupre. As one who has studied this period and read biographies on the main players, I kept wondering WHERE was Minnie Vautrin, the principal of Jinling Women's College, and WHO was this French woman?? How in the world did the creators of this movie go to such lengths to dramatize Rabe's life in Nanjing, yet make up this silly female character to replace an actual, real, wonderful and strong character like Vautrin? It just made NO sense to me at all. The Chinese called Rabe "The Living Buddha" for the immense efforts he made to save them (and as I said, more of this needed to be shown), and Minnie Vautrin, an American educator who loved China, was called the Goddess of Mercy-- there was no romance between them, but only an immense respect and need to help the Chinese. A romance seems to be implied between Rabe and this Miss Dupre character, which is a ridiculous development, especially leaving out the REAL Vautrin and her work. Also, some of the plots seemed superfluous, such as the development with Rabe's wife, and the emotional level was more shallow than I expected for a film about such a man as Rabe. Not a bad film, but just lacking in so many ways. I almost shut it off half way through, out of sheer frustration with the lack of fact and the made-up characters, but stuck it out. There were glaring errors and a disconnectedness to the story that were too distracting for me personally, however, I do recommend it in the end, if only to those who want to know more about such a great man as John Rabe--though, even for a movie hound like m'self, I think READING about him is better than anything this movie offers.