Customer Reviews

Nanking

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In 1937, before America entered the War, the Japanese invaded the city of Nanking, China. Most of the privileged people fled. The less fortunate were trapped. Horrible atrocities were committed. More than 200,000 people were brutally slaughtered and more than 20,000 women were raped. However, if it were not for a brave group of Westerners who considered it their mission to help the people and therefore did not flee, there might have been even more carnage.

This powerful documentary tells this story, based on the diaries and letters from those few committed Westerners. Most of them were missionaries and the one woman, Minnie Vautrin, ran a girls' college. There was also a German businessman who was a Nazi. In addition to interviews with some survivors, as well as historical footage, the filmmaker used a staged reading of the diaries and letters of these Westerners by a variety of professional actors as a device to tell this story. Woody Harrelson is one of these actors as well as Mariel Hemmingway. Jurgen Prochnow was cast in the role of John Rabe the German businessman who, at one point, wishes he could let Adolph Hitler know about these Japanese outrages because he considered Hitler a compassionate man who would not let such atrocities exist.

The filmmakers did an excellent job of organizing a tremendous amount of material. The film was well paced, clear, to the point, and didn't have a wasted word or image. Most of the time there were tears in my eyes and yet the underlying story of how the courage of the brave few who kept the carnage from being even worse, turned the film into moving story instead of letting it sink into absolute despair.

This story is a part of history that should not be forgotten, and a story of inspiration amidst the despair.

Nanking is a truly great film. I give it nothing by accolades.

I, like many other Westerners, first heard of the Rape of Nanjing ten years ago when Iris Chang released her book Rape of Nanking. I, of course, knew that Japan had been at war with China and that the Japanese Imperial Army had done a number of despicable things in China, but it was this book that really opened my eyes to what Japan did in China and had a major enough effect on me to make me dedicate my life to the study of Japanese and Chinese history, literature, and film. While I have become aware that Chang's book is overblown in some ways, blaming the "Shinto Sub Cult" for the ways the Japanese treated the Chinese, it acted as an important catalyst for historians to truly dig into the issue and unearth atrocities that had been hidden by not only the Japanese, but the Chinese Communist Party, and America as well. With a number of scholarly tomes, essays, and translations having been released now, hopefully the world will not only gain a better conception of what happened in China, but why it happened.

Of course, more people are likely to watch a filmic version of the Rape of Nanjing than read a hefty tome, but unfortunately although there are a few limited release documentaries, and the films that have reached a broader audience such as Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre almost revel enough in the gore and bloodshed to make the films more fit to be in someone's splattercore library than as an important bit of media.

The documentary Nanking was financed and conceptualized by AOL vice-chairman Ted Leonsis after he read Rape of Nanking on vacation and learned of Iris Chang's suicide. Instead of just stringing together news footage, photos, and films of the period, Leonsis and the directors Gutenberg and Dan Sturman casted various American and international actors, including Mariel Hemmingway, Woody Harrelson, Jürgen Prochnow, and Michelle Krusiec, to give voice to a number of foreign missionaries, businessmen, and doctors who suffered through the Japanese attack upon Nanjing, but did their best to protect the Chinese citizens and military deserters from the brutality of the Japanese soldiers. Also, there are a number of interviews with Chinese survivors of the Rape

Through their roles of reading the diaries of the missionaries George Fitch, Minnie Vautrin, and John Magee, the doctor Bob Wilson, and the Nazi businessman John Rabe, the actors give voice to these great people who risked their very lives to save the people of the foreign country that had become their home. Through their words, and the ample number of photos and films, the viewer can vicariously experience the travesties they experienced which would shorten all of their lives after the left China.

Nanking is of course quite graphic in its detailing of the suffering of the Chinese people at the hands up the Japanese soldiers, but it also shows the strength of what a few can do against the oppression of many. A good albeit horrifying film, it should be added to the libraries of those interested in history and the bitter relationship between China and Japan

In August of 1937 Japan bombed and then invaded China's capital city of Nanking. In the ensuing six weeks some 200,000 people, mainly citizens, were slaughtered; tens of thousands of others endured unspeakable atrocities that included mass executions, torture, widespread rape, burning and looting. This documentary film draws on archival film footage, interviews with Chinese survivors and Japanese soldiers who witnessed the atrocities, and then the letters and diaries of a small group of westerners who stayed behind to help the Chinese despite the orders of the American Embassy to evacuate. These westerners, mainly missionaries, saved some 250,000 Chinese by establishing a two square mile "Safety Zone" in Nanking. The film switches back and forth between the Japanese atrocities and the heroism of the three missionaries, George Fitch (whose secret 16mm movies documented the horrors), surgeon Bob Wilson, and Minnie Vautrin who headed the Ginling Women's College; and then their leader, the Nazi businessman John Rabe (whose 800-page diary became a key piece of evidence). To a person the Chinese still venerate these four people as their saviors. After the war a tribunal convicted twenty-five Japanese leaders of war crimes. Warning-- parts of this film are very hard to watch.

As a Chinese, I would like to say, many thanks to the people who made the great film. The truth needs to be known to the whole world. I'm also deeply indebted to those Western people who helped Chinese in our difficult time. I would like to see someday people in Nanking erect monument for those great people. There's no reason Chinese people deserve such cruelty. Shaped by the teachings of Confucianism and Taoism, Chinese people traditionally like to make peace and harmony with neighbors. If you look back Chinese history, it's always ethnic tribes who attacked and invaded China, not the other way around. After years' ruling, the attackers were often assimilated with Chinese, and became Chinese themselves eventually. That's the magic of China. On the other hand, the Japanese people are militant in nature and by training. They committed such horrendous crime, but even till now, they refuse to acknowledge what they did and never apologized. Simply, take a look of their banking system. After bubble burst, rather than acknowledge their bad debt, they used all their means to cover it. It's no wonder their economy is still dragging along after 18 years. Their decade-long economic deflation reflects their shameless nature exactly. Personally I hope the new generation of Japanese can learn from their forefather's crime, and make contribution to the world peace instead. But history rhythms, that could be my hopeless wish. Their prime minister continues to bow to the soul of war criminal, Tojo. In contrast, the Germany Chancellor kneed down to in front of the Polish Getto Victim Memorial to beg forgiveness for what Hitler did. The most hated liars are those whose revise history.

War is crime. War not only costs life of both sides, but also wipes off treasures and capitals accumulated through generations. The first and second world war exhausted the great British Empire. The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) destroyed France, the most powerful country from 1700-1800. The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) destroyed Greece Empire. I am afraid the current Iraq War could abolish the great power the United States holds, causing unexpected consequences. We need to unite together, opposing all the wars.

Although 70 years have passed, THE TRUTH shall never be forgot. Especially, when somebody try to hide the true history, the descendances of both the victims and the witnesses need to take their responsibilities.

"Nanking" is one of a kind documentary that sheds light on humanity and kindness of a few heroes who risked everything, including their own lives, to defend hundreds of thousands defenseless victims in the most desperate time.

The unique film tells the story, with a stroke of real genius, of a handful of missionaries, doctors, educators and businessman, who stayed in a war zone armed with only their prayers and Christian spirit, to protect their neighbors and friends from advancing Japanese Imperial Army that was about to commit the bloodiest and most unthinkable crimes against humanity in the 20th Century.

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As one of the event survivors attests, Nanking was the Chinese capital. It was wiped out by the Imperial forces of Japan; a brutal multitude of animal warriors viewing their enemies' women as pigs to rape and slaughter, and their dead babies as dolls impaled upon their bayonets. There were video testaments of The Rape of Nanking but they were but a snowflake on the tip of the iceberg in terms of the horror these poor people endured. Still, I would hold out hope that the advent of film, photography, and more recently the internet would mean the end of such war crimes, perhaps like it did when the Chinese stopped cutting people to pieces in public executions thirty years before the events of Nanking. Instead we contend with the Darfur conflict in Sudan, rampant government controlled torture, and of course who really knows about what is happening within the confines of North Korea. We also let an equally horrific tragedy slip through our hands in Kigali, Rwanda during my young life. Nanking, as a film, does place some emphasis on the foreign heroes of the tragedy, much like 2004's Hotel Rwanda rightfully does for Paul Rusesabagina's heroics during that awful tragedy. We have to find hope within our worst moments, even if it is just a flicker of the human spirit among the burned bloodied naked corpses on the banks of the Yangtze.

This is a documentary that compiles video footage of victims during the attack and victims reflecting on the attack today. It interviews Japanese soldiers, both regretful and proud ones, after the attacks. It also has actors play the tragedy's heroes. German actor Jürgen Prochnow plays John Rabe, an unlikely swastika wearing German business man who saves many. Woody Harrelson plays American physician Bob Wilson, one of the only surgeons to remain in the city during and well after the events took place. Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary educator canonized as a kind of Goddess in China, is portrayed by Murial Hemmingway. Each of their stories are told in this documentary through real diaries they wrote and letters they sent as the events worsened chronologically. It's an approach I initially didn't believe would work for the documentary but in the end it turned out to serve the film well.

Covering this event is important for me because I only come across so many people who actually know the extent of the horror, where some do not even know what The Rape of Nanking was. I was told about the horrors of the Holocaust in middle school but didn't know about Nanking until I was in college, where even there I didn't fully understand what Imperial Japan was doing to the Chinese until I began researching it on my own. Even my grandfather's blind hatred for the Japanese (he fought them for four years in the Pacific 60 plus years ago) wasn't much of a cue. The film does work as an informative piece and if I were a history teacher I would show it to the class without reservation. I think it is important for people to know the gravity of what happened there. However, the inclusion of adulating stories for the heroes of Nanking is a welcome respite, and actually makes the film far more rewarding. I definitely recommend a viewing at least once. In addition to that I adamantly support the encouragement of Japanese authorities to allow their people to see this documentary, as its ban there is a disappointing display of pride, denial, and embarrassment. In the end though, Nanking isn't a film that derides Japanese culture and their people, but instead their contemporaneous policies. Generally speaking, it is a powerful indictment of war.

Interesting how this historical event does not elicit the word genocide throughout the film. I understand that the term was only officially adopted by the UN in 1946, but the film is modern and the brutality of the war crimes were that of cleansing. I have lived in Japan for 7 years and am not sure how aware the Japanese are of the event as each year the Prime Minister attends Tokyo's shrine/memorial for war veterans/heroes. I am not sure there is much to praise for the acts committed by the leaders of the Japanese army in the 30's/40's era.

The thoughts of bayoneting children and throwing them on a pile of bodies, ½ alive, makes one want to cringe. But, in war time people become dehumanized like the Lynndie England events in Abu Ghraib. Remember that many of those tortured were innocent.

So obviously there is even less to honor today as we, the citizens of the world, let a million Rwandans die, turn our heads to the Darfur/Sudan crisis, and excuse fraudulent documents over WMDs that led the west into Iraq - but say it's OK because now "democratic" governments call it humanitarian.

The Nanking documentary here is a powerful one. I didn't feel that it was against modern Japan, but one that highlights the atrocities committed when governments go wrong; unfortunately too frequently. The documentary makes an explicit plea to not go against Japan, but to see this documentary as such, a lesson. Unfortunately we as a mass society have not learnt our lessons well. So, if such themes are of interest to you this is a good one for the collection to build knowledge of historical events that need to be lessons for change.

A good movie to watch and reflect upon. the production, the facts, the criticism behind the movie should be acknowledged (see 1 star ratings) but these should not prevent the viewing of the movie - far from it. Any movie/documentary made will have various sides, especially one on war.

I have read about the "Rape of Nanking" in a book by the same name. I also read a book on the Tokyo War Crimes trials that covered the heinous incident among the many other WWII-era crimes of the Japanese Imperial Army. These accounts were disturbing to say the least. It was the porpaganda of Japanese imperialism that their conquests were intended to free their fellow Asians from the Colonialism of the Western nations. How then did they show their pan-Asian mutual interests in China? Nanking was merely the most egregious example of more than a decade of conquest and dominion.

When I saw that there was a documentary of the horrors of Nanking, I quickly rented it for a visual background of the sordid events. There are a number of gruesome and troubling pictures although they were properly limited. The written record of the crime tells more than the limited video account. Much of the written record of the rape and murder came from a group of European educators, missionaries, businessmen and doctors. Their efforts to save as many of the potential victims in an international safe zone were largely successful and were a main focus of the documentary.

What bothered me about the format of "Nanking" was the decision to have actors portray the Europeans who wrote about the events while using actual Chinese survivors relate their own personal stories. The mix didn't work at all in my opinion. There was enough film of the Europeans to use along with still photos as background for voice narration of the accounts. Watching the actors sitting in a studio while speaking selections from the written accounts detracted from the video accounts of horror and the testamonials of the actual survivors. The film's depiction of heros, villans, victims, survivors and Hollywood actors might have worked for a fund-raiser but not for a documentary.

In 1937 the Japanese occupied Nanking, a bustling city then the capital of China, and reduced it to rubble. In the process, they murdered more than a quarter of a million Chinese men, women, and children in a six week period. In horrible, documented accounts (many on film clips edited into this picture), the Japanese military bayoneted infants and pregnant women, eviscerated children, machine-gunned men en masse, burned hundreds alive, forced the living to copulate with the dead, buried people alive, and raped girls and women of all ages from infancy to senescence, many of whom were killed thereafter (and when no females were around, young boys sufficed). The Allies later determined that there were at least 20,000 rapes committed in the first month of Japanese occupation alone (an admittedly low number; some sources put the number at over 80,000).

In the midst of all the destruction, a determined group of Westerners established a "Safety Zone" in the city into which crowded tens of thousands. Most of the leaders of the "Safety Zone" were missionaries, but some were German Nazi Party members who were sickened by the sights they saw. Although the "Safety Zone" had no legal status, the Japanese largely respected its bounds and respected the people who had established it. Together, these righteous people managed to save about 250,000 Chinese.

NANKING is a document which memorializes the fearsome "Rape of Nanking" in image and word. Several well-known actors portray the missionaries (not in action, but as commentators, reading from diaries, reports, and letters). Interviews with survivors and now-aged former Japanese soldiers also make up the substance of this film.

It is sad to hear that the Missionary Dean of the local girls' College, Miss Minnie Vautin "The Angel of Nanking," who protected hundreds of young Chinese women from depredation, later committed suicide when the horrors of World War II overwhelmed her.

It is even more sad to hear of John Rabe, a confirmed Nazi Party member, who wrote to Hitler in outrage, asking that he do something to protect the helpless Chinese, believing, as he said, that the Nazi leader was concerned with the needs of the poor in Germany, and therefore, he assumed, elsewhere; Rabe's films and photos were confiscated and Rabe was sent to a Concentration Camp when he returned to Germany (Rabe was later sent to the Gulag by the Soviets). He ended his days living off donations from thankful Nankingese citizens whom he'd saved, a kind of Oriental Oskar Schindler.

Still, the essence of this film comes across in the searing images of tortured bodies and minds in every frame. An almost forgotten episode, Nanking was the site of Japan's own Final Solution, a genocide which (in 1937) was unparalleled. Unfortunately for humanity, it was not to remain so for very long.