The Flowers of War

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

Some of you may know that Nanjing was invaded by the Japanese, before they launched the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were brutal to the people of Nanjing, and murdered and raped more than 300,000 Chinese men, women, and children. The Chinese are very sensitive about this topic, and Japan has never formally admitted to the atrocities its soldiers committed here. Even though I have lived in Nanjing for almost four years, I was very reluctant to visit the holocaust museum. I did go once with a friend however, and as you can imagine it's a sad and somber place.

 

This Christmas, the Chinese made and directed movie, "The Flowers of War" is being released. I went with several of my Chinese colleagues to see this movie yesterday, and was completely impressed and touched by it. It stars Christian Bale, who plays an opportunistic Westerner, who was in China drinking too much, and doing anything he could to make and swindle money. He did his best to escape the advancing Japanese troops, and met up with some young Chinese girls who were part of a convent. It's a bit of a tear-jerker, with both English and Chinese subtitles.

 

It's a must see for those of you who have interest in China, or have a Chinese wife or girlfriend. While the movie is based on a novel, still much of the content is based in fact. The acting, characters, and cinematography are nothing less than fantastic.

[DennisLeiqin]

Some of you may know that Nanjing was invaded by the Japanese, before they launched the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were brutal to the people of Nanjing, and murdered and raped more than 300,000 Chinese men, women, and children. The Chinese are very sensitive about this topic, and Japan has never formally admitted to the atrocities its soldiers committed here. Even though I have lived in Nanjing for almost four years, I was very reluctant to visit the holocaust museum. I did go once with a friend however, and as you can imagine it's a sad and somber place.

 

This Christmas, the Chinese made and directed movie, "The Flowers of War" is being released. I went with several of my Chinese colleagues to see this movie yesterday, and was completely impressed and touched by it. It stars Christian Bale, who plays an opportunistic Westerner, who was in China drinking too much, and doing anything he could to make and swindle money. He did his best to escape the advancing Japanese troops, and met up with some young Chinese girls who were part of a convent. It's a bit of a tear-jerker, with both English and Chinese subtitles.

 

It's a must see for those of you who have interest in China, or have a Chinese wife or girlfriend. While the movie is based on a novel, still much of the content is based in fact. The acting, characters, and cinematography are nothing less than fantastic.

Well, I will just put The Flowers of War on my to watch list. I love those type of docu-tear-jerker movies. Thanks for the review. Hope it has subtitles.

[michaln]

I will probably have to watch this one alone.

ling loves war movies when Japanese are being killed

[honeybun]

i was just reading about this movie earlier today. apparently christian bale is taking an interest in chinese politics as he showed up (with a film crew in tow for some odd reason) at the home of a human rights activist. i think, like most westerners, he may not realize that he probably had a negative effect on the life of this chinese man... but he did succeed in getting publicity for himself and (probably to a lesser extent) some of the issues.

[Randy W]

According to Wikipedia, it was directed by Zhang Yimou, with 40% of the dialog in English (the rest Mandarin).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flowers_of_War

 

The Flowers of War (simplified Chinese: ½ðÁêÊ®ÈýîÎ; traditional Chinese: ½ðÁêÊ®ÈýâO), previously called Nanjing Heroes and 13 Flowers of Nanjing, is a 2011 Chinese historical drama war film directed by Zhang Yimou, starring Christian Bale, Ni Ni and Tong Dawei. The film, which is based on the novel The 13 Women of Nanjing by Geling Yan, has been selected as the Chinese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards. Also, it is nominated for the 69th Golden Globe Awards.

 

On November 7, 2011, it was announced that the film's North American distribution rights were acquired by Wrekin Hill Entertainment, in association with Row 1 Productions, leaving The Flowers of War to a limited release in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco for late December, 2011, expanding throughout the following year.

 

. . .

 

Zhang stated that the story in The Flowers of War differs from many other Chinese films on this subject as it is told from the perspectives of women.[

[tsap seui]

Anything directed by Zhang Yimou is gonna be a darn good movie. He is a pure genious.

 

tsap seui

[Mick]

Will put the movie on my to watch list as well. I have visited the museum you spoke of and found it a very moving experience. My wife's family, from Anhui and Jiangsu, suffered greatly under the Japanese, especially Li's grandmother. I also recommend the book "The Rape of Nanking," by Iris Chang.

[A Mafan]

To me, the amazing thing is that the atrocities in Nanjing were well on their way to being successfully covered up by the Japanese and forgotten until Iris Chang put the effort into her book (referred to by Mick):

 

Excerpt from the Wiki entry on The Rape of Nanking:

When Iris Chang was a child, she was told by her immigrant parents, who had escaped from China via Taiwan to the United States during World War II, that during the Nanking Massacre, the Japanese "sliced babies not just in half but in thirds and fourths". In the introduction of The Rape of Nanking, she wrote that throughout her childhood, the Nanking Massacre "remained buried in the back of [her] mind as a metaphor for unspeakable evil". When she searched the local public libraries in her school and found nothing, she wondered why nobody had written a book about it.[6]

 

The subject of the Nanking Massacre entered Chang's life again almost two decades later when she learned of producers who had completed documentary films about it. One of the producers was Shao Tzuping, who helped produce Magee's Testament, a film which contains footage of the Nanking Massacre itself, shot by the missionary John Magee.[7] The other producer was Nancy Tong, who, together with Christine Choy, produced and co-directed In The Name of the Emperor, a film containing a series of interviews with Chinese, American, and Japanese citizens.[7] Chang began talking to Shao and Tong, and soon she was connected to a network of activists who felt the need to document and publicize the Nanking Massacre.[8] In December 1994, she attended a conference on the Nanking Massacre, held in Cupertino, California, and it was what she saw and heard at the conference that motivated her to write The Rape of Nanking.[9] As she wrote in the introduction of the book, while she was at the conference, she was "suddenly in a panic that this terrifying disrespect for death and dying, this reversion in human social evolution, would be reduced to a footnote of history, treated like a harmless glitch in a computer program that might or might not again cause a problem, unless someone forced the world to remember it".[10]

[edit] Research

 

Chang spent two years on research for the book.[4] She found that raw source materials were available in the US, contained in the diaries, films, and photographs of American missionaries, journalists, and military officers who were in Nanjing at the time of the Nanking Massacre.[11] Additionally, she traveled to Nanjing to interview survivors of the Nanking Massacre and to read Chinese accounts and confessions by Japanese army veterans.[12] Chang did not, however, conduct research in Japan, and this left her vulnerable to criticisms on how she portrayed modern Japan in the context of how it deals with its World War II past.[12]

 

Chang's research led her to make what one San Francisco Chronicle article called "significant discoveries" on the subject of the Nanking Massacre, in the forms of the diaries of two Westerners that were in Nanjing leading efforts to save lives during the Japanese invasion.[4] The first diary was that of John Rabe, a German Nazi Party member who was the leader of the Nanking Safety Zone, a demilitarized zone in Nanjing that Rabe and other Westerners set up to protect Chinese civilians.[13] The other diary belonged to the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, who saved the lives of about 10,000 women and children when she provided them with shelter in Ginling College.[14] The diaries documented the events of the Nanking Massacre from the perspectives of their writers, and provided detailed accounts of atrocities that they saw, as well as information surrounding the circumstances of the Nanking Safety Zone. Chang dubbed Rabe the "Oskar Schindler of Nanking" and Vautrin the "Anne Frank of Nanking".[4] Rabe's diary is over 800 pages, and contains one of the most detailed accounts of the Nanking Massacre.[15] Translated into English, it was published in 1998 by Random House as a book on its own, called The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe.[16] Vautrin's diary recounts her personal experience and feelings on the Nanking Massacre; in it, an entry reads, "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today."[17] It was used as source material for a biographical book about Vautrin and her role during the Nanking Massacre, called American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, written by Hua-ling Hu.[18]

[A Mafan]

FWIW, I don't like Zhang Yimou that much.

 

The short explanation is that I think he goes too far in manipulating emotions, i.e., exaggerating tragedy beyond reasonable proportions. But maybe he's finally found a topic that matches his penchant for dramatics.

[Zhou Zhou]

I'll certainly watch for this movie. There was another I saw promos about a few years ago about the Long March and war with Japan and the Nationalists. It was supposed to be a top movie shown world wide, but I never saw it released here in the US. Anybody...?

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

FWIW, I don't like Zhang Yimou that much.

 

The short explanation is that I think he goes too far in manipulating emotions, i.e., exaggerating tragedy beyond reasonable proportions. But maybe he's finally found a topic that matches his penchant for dramatics.

 

Many of the movies and serial shows you'll see in China are wrapped in emotion. Death, infidelity, hunger, poverty, what have you. This movie stuck a good balance between emotion, reality, while even adding humor from time to time. I hope it rings well with Western audiences, because as the piece you posted suggests, most of the world is unfamiliar with the brutality the Japanese inflicted on the Chinese people. Japan continues in an arrogant posture of never admitting to what was done in Nanjing by their soldiers.

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

Some of you may know that Nanjing was invaded by the Japanese, before they launched the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were brutal to the people of Nanjing, and murdered and raped more than 300,000 Chinese men, women, and children. The Chinese are very sensitive about this topic, and Japan has never formally admitted to the atrocities its soldiers committed here. Even though I have lived in Nanjing for almost four years, I was very reluctant to visit the holocaust museum. I did go once with a friend however, and as you can imagine it's a sad and somber place.

 

This Christmas, the Chinese made and directed movie, "The Flowers of War" is being released. I went with several of my Chinese colleagues to see this movie yesterday, and was completely impressed and touched by it. It stars Christian Bale, who plays an opportunistic Westerner, who was in China drinking too much, and doing anything he could to make and swindle money. He did his best to escape the advancing Japanese troops, and met up with some young Chinese girls who were part of a convent. It's a bit of a tear-jerker, with both English and Chinese subtitles.

 

It's a must see for those of you who have interest in China, or have a Chinese wife or girlfriend. While the movie is based on a novel, still much of the content is based in fact. The acting, characters, and cinematography are nothing less than fantastic.

Well, I will just put The Flowers of War on my to watch list. I love those type of docu-tear-jerker movies. Thanks for the review. Hope it has subtitles.

 

 

Yes, it does have subtitles, as there is English, Japanese, Mandarin, and NanjingHua spoken in the film. Christian Bale speaks English, with a few humorous attempts to speak Chinese. The young girls from the convent speak English as they were educated there. The red-light girls who sought refuge in the convent became key players. One of the red-light girls spoke English with Christian Bale, along with a young boy from the convent (George).

 

I was reluctant to see this movie, as it is very difficult for me to witness and view suffering. I thought the movie would be filled with death, rape, maiming, and other terrible things. Somehow, the movie managed to successfully present what happened without bashing the audience over the head.

Edited December 22, 2011 by JiangsuExpat (see edit history)

[tsap seui]

FWIW, I don't like Zhang Yimou that much.

 

The short explanation is that I think he goes too far in manipulating emotions, i.e., exaggerating tragedy beyond reasonable proportions. But maybe he's finally found a topic that matches his penchant for dramatics.

As individuals we all see what we want to see, in this case in a movie. I never saw what you say with his movies, the exageration, etc, but that's cool that you felt he tried to manipulate your emotions too far, etc.

 

Zhangs work captivates me with how he guides his actors to get the portrayals he envisions. I like his point of view on his characters, use of mystery, and subtle hidden meanings. As well he has a hugh following, even his peers hold him in high esteem. I've seen another favorite director, Quentin Tarantino, who when asked about Zhang in an interview just couldn't say enough good about him and how his work intrigued him with the way he portrays life through his actors, the interviewer almost had to tie ol' Quentin down ot get him off of the subject of Zhang Yimou.

 

If he's manipulative, I'll take it...I've never finished one of his movies that didn't make me saw "WOW".

 

tsap seui

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

FWIW, I don't like Zhang Yimou that much.

 

The short explanation is that I think he goes too far in manipulating emotions, i.e., exaggerating tragedy beyond reasonable proportions. But maybe he's finally found a topic that matches his penchant for dramatics.

As individuals we all see what we want to see, in this case in a movie. I never saw what you say with his movies, the exageration, etc, but that's cool that you felt he tried to manipulate your emotions too far, etc.

 

Zhangs work captivates me with how he guides his actors to get the portrayals he envisions. I like his point of view on his characters, use of mystery, and subtle hidden meanings. As well he has a hugh following, even his peers hold him in high esteem. I've seen another favorite director, Quentin Tarantino, who when asked about Zhang in an interview just couldn't say enough good about him and how his work intrigued him with the way he portrays life through his actors, the interviewer almost had to tie ol' Quentin down ot get him off of the subject of Zhang Yimou.

 

If he's manipulative, I'll take it...I've never finished one of his movies that didn't make me saw "WOW".

 

tsap seui

 

I agree with you tsap. I'm also a Tarantino fan. Every now and then a director comes along who breaks the mold. This movie breaks through many of the cultural barriers that have long prevented the acceptance of Asian movies as anything more than a novelty. Alfred Hitchcock also had the ability to convey emotion on the screen without all the CGI and graphics used in movies today. Everything about this movie seemed real. I was never left with a feeling that too much emotion was being tossed about. All characters were successfully developed and believable.

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

If you read the reviews coming out in the West about this film they are mixed at best. Some calling it a seedy attempt by a director obsessed with sex to inject prostitutes into a movie about death and rape. Others saying it poorly portrays the experience of the many challenges faced by the expat in China. Obviously, the director, Zhang Yimou, could have filled the film with horror. He did not. I don't need to see a recreation of the events of 1937 to imagine what happened there. There are still many Chinese people living in Nanjing who survived and lived to tell the stories. The movie is not perfect, but it was very well done. Any expat who is left feeling it does not adequately express their plight went to the wrong movie.