Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiration amidst the despair - a history lesson to remember, December 24, 2007
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.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Purple Mountains on Fire, May 27, 2008
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
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
war horrors, missionary heroism, April 30, 2008
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.
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