The Flowers Of War

[Story]

Not for the political content, but the film info -

Oscar winning actor Christian Bale defended Sunday the upcoming Nanjing Massacre film "The Flowers of War," by China's most famous director, Zhang Yimou, as more than an anti-Japanese propaganda film.
In the film, Bale plays an American drifter who becomes the unwitting protector of a group of Chinese schoolgirls and prostitutes trying to escape the Japanese army's brutal sacking of China's wartime capital.

The Nanjing Massacre, in which Japanese troops killed tens of thousands of Chinese civilians, is an episode from history that Japan has never acknowledged to China's satisfaction.

The 2-1/2 hour film, which opens to the public across China on December 16, is filled with battle scenes between Chinese and Japanese soldiers, and the brutal rape and murder of Chinese women by Japanese troops.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.83b864429e5546a58ebb4887d697221 7.6f1&show_article=1


[video=youtube;EQ7eBs6YbT8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ7eBs6YbT8[/video]

 

[Bluebird Marsha]

Sounds like it could be a good film, but I don't think I could bear to watch it.

Hmm. Doesn't there have to be a lie at the heart of something in order for it to be propaganda? If anything, I suspect this film toned down some of the horror. If they didn't, I think a large number of movie goers would be leaving the theater early during the showing.

 

[SGT Rocket]

I watched about the first 10 or 15 seconds of the trailer. It looked good, but it kind of began to really freak me out. It has been really hard for me to watch any sort of "action" film since I got back from Iraq. I probably would have loved it before, but, Se la vie.

 

[DNO]

A story that needs telling. Good trailer.

 

[Story]

A story that needs telling.

Yup.

Historians say the 1937 massacre in the eastern city now known as Nanjing resulted in the slaughter of at least 150,000 civilians. China puts the number killed at 300,000, making it one of the worst atrocities of the World War II era.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...lm-flowers-war-article-1.990239#ixzz1gKsISvuv

 

[DNO]

Being a frequent visitor to used books stores and book-heavy thrift stores, I keep hoping to find Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking...to no avail so far. I found a work on Iris Chang herself...not a happy story...but still no Nanking book.

I am familiar with the event. Quite an act of barbarism.

 

[Story]

I am familiar with the event. Quite an act of barbarism.

You may be, but I've found that the vast majority aren't and it never seems to get as much publicity as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Curious, that.

 

[DNO]

It's been my experience that a large number of historical episodes are basically ignored or unknown. Events like the Allied (US, UK, and others) involvement in the Russian civil war in 1919-20, or the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850's and '60's (estimated 20 million dead), or the Philippine Insurrection (about which I am still learning) are unknown. Few people seem to know that there were war crimes trials in the Far East after WWII (not just the Nuremburg trials). There is a certain intellectual laziness that seems to govern these days...and a desire to ignore some of the more sordid events of our past. Until recently, even the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918-9 was ignored. In the case of the Nanking Massacre, there appears to have even been an active case of cover-up.

I look forward to this film, even though it will be difficult viewing.