Based on novel by Liú Héng, The Thirteen Flowers of War
Screenplay by Geling Yan and Zhang Vimou
Director, Zhang Vimou
Cinematographer, Zhao Xiaoding
Opening this date, 114 minutes
It’s 1937, Nanjing, and the Japanese Army is raping and slaughtering minds, bodies and souls, though some souls are more resilient than others, their altruism empowering, as that spirit evolves beautifully and thematically in the course of the movie, first seen with a Chinese soldier’s self-sacrifice. And then the pulse of self-sacrifice for a greater glory picks up in the grand theme to save kids from the fate kids around the world suffer whenever armies of the world engage in crimes against humanity.
Darwin would have been impressed: Survival of the species means saving kids’ minds, bodies and souls. However, Nietzsche, if he had been at the screening, might have walked out in a huff.
Kids running for their lives, their flight rendered poetically beautiful (despite the horror they're fleeing) by Cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding. Courtesy, movie trailer, New Pictures Film Corp.
Part of the story is told through a narration of one of the kids who survived.
The plot: Oscar Award-winning Christian Bale as John Miller is a swaggering, self-centered Soldier of Opportunistic Fortune, American, of course, caught up in the Rape of Nanking even though there is an assumption that invading Japanese, it is said to be, are not knowingly targeting Americans for what the Japanese have in mind for the Chinese. He is suave and those at the screening needed him to “survive” the harrowing first 45 minutes, until the flush of altruism began to ooze soothingly.
A few minutes into the screening, and this reviewer recalled Bale’s Jim ‘Jamie’ Graham in the THE EMPIRE OF THE SUN, where he was an ingenue surviving the Japanese invasion with his soul obviously in tact.
In FLOWERS OF WAR, the audience learns appropriately soon that beneath his swaggering machismo beats the heart of a decent man even if he is not as priestly as the one he pretends to be, first to survive the butchery occurring, and then to thwart the Japanese final solution for the female students in the cathedral where protagonists and antagonists have sought shelter. Eventually, Miller’s survival – we’re talking mind, body, soul – depends with him helping the ingenues in this film to survive after they have helped the courtesans to survive hiding within the cathedral.
The self-serving Solider of Opportunistic Fortune joins forces with The Courtesans of Opportunistic Fortune to save the kids. It is the magic of Director Vimou and Cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding and Co-script Writer Héng that will keep you silent and almost mesmerized in your seats (except for several occasions when you groan because of the horror taking place on the big screen – it is relentless).
Courtesy, movie trailer, New Pictures Film Corp.
Courtesy, movie trailer, New Pictures Film Corp.
Joining Bale and leading lady Ni Ni playing the sophisticated courtesan leader is a cast that also includes 13-year-old Zhang Xinyi in her film debut as the narrator Shu; newcomer Huang Tianyuan as George, the boy who takes it upon himself to protect the school girls after the death of the local priest; Tong Dawei (Apple; Red Cliff) as Major Li, a war-weary soldier determined to save the life of a wounded compatriot; Atsuro Watabe (A Quiet Life / Shizukana Seikatsu) as Colonel Hasegawa, commander of the occupying Japanese army; Shigeo Kobayashi (Todai) as Lt. Kato, his ruthless sidekick, and popular Chinese television presenter, Cao Kefan, as Mr. Meng, a Chinese civilian who will do anything to save the life of his young daughter.
See this movie three times.
Gregg Morris can be reached at gmorris@hunter.cuny.edu
P.S. News accounts as well as publicity reported that this film was heavily financed by Beijing. So what? Regardless their propagandist agenda.