City of Life and Death

Remarkably, considering this is a Chinese film based around the infamous Rape of Nanking in 1937, the closest we have to a protagonist is Kadokawa, a young Japanese soldier. There's no hero, rather a selection of people from different walks of life struggling to survive in an occupied city. Considering that the film doesn't fudge the atrocities committed, it's a remarkably restrained piece of work. The black and white cinematography helps, occasionally feeling like newsreel footage but mostly radiating an air of sober melancholy. Not that it's dull film-making. There are virtuoso sequences, such as the cross-cutting of the massacre of Chinese POWs or the framing and editing of the Japanese celebration of victory. Elsewhere classical film-making alternates with handheld camerawork, and the framing is unerringly spot-on (amid the chaos of a small room, as soldiers attempt to drag away women, one unexpectedly - and shockingly - lifts a small child onto a windowledge, opens the window and throws her out; Kadokawa, standing benumbed amid the draped beds of the "comfort women") Survival is a lottery: a young boy somehow survives the massacre that kills his idol Lu; the bodies of the luckless "comfort women" are piled on carts; Tang swaps places with a disguised Chinese officer, in effect sacrificing himself as amends for collaborating with the Japanese. There might not be much character development but the characters themselves are impressively nuanced. The Japanese commit appalling acts but are never actually demonized. Rabe might be a Nazi but he (futilely) attempts to defend the refugees in the Safety Zone (and is recalled by an irritated Hitler). Tang only wants to protect his family but his actions result in the massacre of wounded Chinese soldiers in the Safety Zone and the murder of his daughter and sister-in-law. Kadokawa kills a woman out of mercy before freeing 2 prisoners. It's not an easy watch by any means but it's never exploitative or hectoring. It doesn't need to be. The events are powerful enough to grip the viewer.