Nanking

If I am going to recommend a documentary, then Nanking will be it. The Rape of Nanking just prior to World War II is examined in this film, which contains real stock footage of clips smuggled out of China during the time of Japanese occupation. Interviews with surviving Chinese victims, and a number of Japanese Imperial Army soldiers who took part in the campaign, are conducted by the filmmakers, and it is always chilling to learn from them first hand, on their respective perspective of those horrible years of the Japanese invasion of China.

You will definitely squirm at the tearful, vivid recollection of atrocities from rapes, shootings, knifing from bayonets, and even burning, while the archive clips bring to screen scenes and pictures of such barbaric acts. Tales of plundering, looting, the forceful taking away of young men to be shot and young girls or boys, children even, for brutal rape, are told with an unflinching eye. In fact, nothing is re-enacted in this film, opting instead for actors (such as Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemmingway and Michelle Krusiec) to portray real historical characters and only as narrators of their personal diaries and memoirs of their stay in Nanking during the invasion and subsequent occupation.

While the rest of the world stood by and did nothing, a handful of foreigners who opted to stay in the city, did what they could by organizing themselves and setting up a Safety Zone for the Chinese refugees, using all the power that they could (which was very little, save for the fact that they are foreigners) to protect their charges from the looting, plundering, killing and rape that takes place on a regular basis outside their zone. And it is indeed this Zone which had saved thousands of lives, that this documentary paid a sort of tribute to.

If this is an anti-war picture, then I'd say it would have done a very good job, highlighting the immense amount of evil that man is capable of inflicting on fellow man. Even up until today, the Massacre of Nanjing is still hotly debated, especially on the number of unfortunate casualties and victims, and the enshrinement of war criminals which have irked the Chinese.

Filmmakers Guttentag and Sturman have produced a short but unforgettable documentary about one of the ugliest stories in twentieth century warfare: the event known as "the rape of Nanking." During a brief period in late December 1937 Japanese forces bombed the city of Nanking, then the capital of China, moving on after assaulting Shanghai. Much of the city's population fled. But the poor had to remain, lacking the money to get out. Troops then moved in and brutally executed several hundred thousand civilians using guns and bayonets and fire, and raped tens of thousands of woman, leaving most of the once beautiful, prosperous city in ruins. They also immediately executed, by various methods, thousands of captured soldiers.

The positive side of the story is that a group of foreigners, perhaps less that two dozen, who had been resident in Nanking remained there to help save the helpless civilians (and soldiers who had fled) and created a Safety Zone to protect them. It was not respected, but nonetheless they were able to save perhaps another couple of hundred thousand people.

The presentation lasts only 88 minutes but is packed with mind-boggling material. Using a ground approach similar to the Culture Project's theater events 'Exonerated' and 'Guantanamo,' in which a group of actors dramatically read actual accounts, the foreigners' stories (and that of one Japanese soldier) are reconstructed by Stephen Dorff, Woody Harrelson. Mariel Hemingway, and others. In between their accounts there are interviews with Chinese survivors and some Japanese soldiers involved in the massacres.

The most important foreigners are Bob Wilson, Minnie Vautrin, and John Rabe, whose accounts are voiced by Harrelson, Hemingway, and Jürgen Prochnow, respectively. Wilson was a surgeon born in China, son of a missionary, who stayed on after the bombing. Vautrin was a missionary and head of the education department of a college; she hid her women students and saved them from being raped. Rabe was a German businessman and Nazi Pary member who protected hundreds of Chinese civilians on his estate. He and Wilson and Magee were the most active in establishing the two-square-mile Safety Zone that provided a shaky but essential shield for refugees who fled their homes.

There are some film clips of killings. John Magee (voiced here by Hugo Armstrong) was an Episcopal minister and a filmmaker who helped maintain a hospital. His film footage of maimed and disfigured victims of the atrocities was smuggled out of the country and only discovered in the 1980s in Germany.

The accounts of the foreigners provide a sense of the time line and the main events of Nanking. But it is the Chinese survivors, bravely describing unimaginable horrors, who make the most vivid impression. I say "unimaginable," but we have heard about them as children, perhaps, and all imagined them. But here they are, described as vividly as if they happened yesterday, to a mother and a baby brother, right before the eyes of a seven-year-old. What must it be like to have been that seven-year-old and to carry such memories through all one's life? That is what one doesn't want to imagine.

Some of the Japanese veterans are smiling as they speak. They acknowledge the rapes and atrocities and massacres and tell how they did it. (How can they be smiling? Perhaps out of embarrassment. Or is the word shame? These are the most troubling moments of the film.) The dozen or so high ranking Japanese officers who were convicted of war crimes afterward have a memorial in their name in Tokyo and it is a place where right-wing pro-war Japanese like to hold rallies. Getting the films of Japanese survivors was a tricky business, because people in Japan don't want to acknowledge, or even talk about, this moment in their history. They have often denied that things were as bad as some said. The evidence of the film, and the accounts of the Japanese veterans themselves, disproves those denials. We have witnesses, and that is the basic function of this film: to bear witness. Japanese officials complained that foreigners were not supposed to be there, that this was the "first time" (hardly) a war had taken place with neutral observers. "We did not want to be observed," they said.

But this is not, of course, meant as the attack on one nationality or an incitement to revenge. It's a story of madness in wartime and hence an indictment of war itself. And the film is also a moving account of the bravery of the few foreigners who saw the horrible events as a challenge to perform acts of extraordinary courage and goodness. The film is a heavy burden to take on, but it is not without hope, and proof of the ability of the Chinese to endure.

As a Chinese, I knew the Nanking massacre when I was young. I was frightened when I saw so many horrible pictures taken at that time. When I learned that the film Nanking would be shown, I was hesitated. I should watch it because I'm a Chinese, but I didn't have the nerve. I didn't have the nerve to see my countrymen being butchered most brutally and I didn't want to arouse the sad memories.

After a week of hesitation, I went to the cinema and watched it finally. I really want to know more about the truth. When I was sitting in the cinema and watching, my tears kept rolling down. I felt my heart so cold and my head so painful. I feel so painful for my countrymen at that time and so moved by the foreigners who risked their own lives for saving the innocent and helpless Chinese.

The massacre did happened. No one can deny. I appreciated Ms Chang who bravely wrote the book and the directors of this movie. It tells the truth yet does not arouse the hatred. A sentence in the movie impressed me a great deal, it approximately goes like this: We don't make you to hate the Japanese, we want you to know how horrible war is.

Yes, we hate war and love peace.

I imagine it's hard enough to make a compelling documentary with those depicted being alive. That said, when those whose diaries are the basis for said documentary have long since passed on it must be a minor miracle if the project works in even a small way. Oh, yes add in that few people cared at the time the actual events occurred, either by ignorance or indifference, and that very same lack of interest still exists today...So, why bother? Perhaps, because it has been said that a society who fails to recognize its mistakes is doomed to repeat them. If you believe in this simple premise then how can we not properly acknowledge what the Japanese did, while the world watched, even this many years later. Every generation needs to learn from our collective history and I believe this movie is an important tool in that lesson.

More to the point of Nanking. It is not in any way meant to be any kind of definitive documentary of all events that were related to the Japanese destruction of Nanking and therefore should not be examined as such. It tells the story of the few, the foreigners, in a very narrow time period who were responsible for the preservation of at least a quarter of a million Chinese refugees who would have most certainly been massacred. It does this by a uniquely artistic device of using some living survivors interspersed with actors portraying those who are dead yet are able to tell their stories using wording right from their diaries. By understanding that the words are the actual words of these deceased people who saved lives against the fiercest evil more than validates this approach for this viewer.

I want to recommend this movie to those interested in the atrocities of war as it relates to history and who we are and should be. All civilized humanity should fight for justice and never sit idly by as evil goes about it's business unchecked. When we sit back and do nothing evil flourishes as history proved all to well in the next seven or eight years as more Japanese and Nazi atrocities mounted. This movie reminds us of that and as such is not a "hate letter" to any sect, but shows the human capacity for both evil and good. It's our mandate to make sure good wins and I find this documentary effectively states this. Important and timely, highly recommended.

In 1937, the Japanese army invades China in a cruel war and after the fall of Shanghai, the soldiers head to the capital Nanking. A group of Western foreigners led by John Rabe, Minnie Vautrin, Bob Wilson and George Fitch create the Safety Zone, a sanctuary that was not bombed by the Japanese airplanes, to protect thousands of refugees. While the Japanese soldiers reach the town on 13 December 1937, raping, slaughtering and pillaging the civilian, the heroic group of Westerns defends the lives of about 250,000 Chinese sacrificing their own freedom, and succeeds to tell the world the crimes of war committed by the Japanese army in Nanking.

The harrowing, heartbreaking and awesome "Nanking" retells the story of the genocide in Nanking in 1937 promoted by the Japanese army. In the late 90's I saw the also impressive and disturbing "Nanjing 1937" (a.k.a. "Don't Cry, Nanking") and I confess that was the first time I heard anything about this massacre. In the movie "Shake Hands with the Devil", the Canadian General Romeo Dellaire has a fantastic line when he says that "genocide is when there are cargo train, concentration camps, gas chambers". In Hollywood, usually genocide is associated to the Jews in World War II and there are dozens of excellent movies about this dark period of the contemporary history. "Nanking" uses letters and other documents written mainly by the group of Westerns that created the Safety Zone in touching and emotional lectures of great actors and actresses; disturbing and heartbreaking testimonies of survivors; a great number of footages, in a magnificent work of research; and the wonderful music score of Kronos Quartet. I immediately associated how traumatic might have been the lives of these survivors after witnessing such cruel crimes of war. Further, in Nanking there were Westerns observers that told the world part of what happened in the city; imagine in Shanghai and in the minor towns in the countryside on the way of the Japanese troops without foreign witnesses how violent these soldiers might have been with the population. These group of expatriated shows the difference that an individual can make. I was really disturbed and sad after watching this fantastic movie. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Note: On 24 May 2013 I saw this documentary again.