"Nanking" is a devastating documentary about the 1937 occupation and rape of Nanking(it is estimated there were 20,000 rapes in the first month) by the Japanese army.(I had heard this event mentioned on occasion but never seen it documented with this level of detail.) A group of Westerners stayed past the evacuations
on a mission of mercy, setting up a safety zone in an attempt to save as many civilians as they can.(They saved as many as 250,000 people.) Among their number, were a group of Americans and one Nazi businessman, John Rabe.(On the one hand, Rabe being a part of this courageous humanitarian mission is beyond irony. But his petitiioning his government for help does present new evidence into the debate of what the German people knew and when did they know it.) Of particular concern were former Chinese troops who were being summarily executed and of course any women.Along with archival and newswreel footage, interviews with Chinese survivors and Japanese soldiers involved in the atrocities, the movie has actors including Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Jurgen Prochnow, Chris Mulkey, Rosalind Chao, Stephen Dorff, and Mark Valley read testimony from the observers straight to the camera.(They felt that if their testimony could be heard by the outside world, then pressure could be applied to stop the atrocities, especially by the Japanese public but it does not seem likely since they were stirred into a militaristic and patriotic fervor by their dictatorial government.) It does take a little while to get used to this technique but it is as effective as everything else in this superb antiwar film.
December 25, 2007
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