Invasion

 

One of the first major events in the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1941) was Japan’s conquering of the Chinese capital city of Nanjing. For the Chinese and their associates, the event started a new period of suffering, abuse and death. So brutal was the Japanese treatment of the Chinese soldiers and civilians that history speaks of the “Rape of Nanking”. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives; tens of thousands were raped.

Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death, in stark black-and-white, shows the atrocities of this particular part of the Sino-Japanese war while looking for the human stories contained within. This is how the film moves from episode to episode without settling on a single main protagonist, unless you count the Japanese soldier Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi). The film details Kadokawa’s start as a young soldier on whom the war takes a definite toll as it continues and he remains in Nanking.

We also meet Mr and Mrs Tang (Wei Fan and Lan Qin), who work in the Chinese refugee camp with the famous German Johan Rabe (John Paisley), as well as the beautiful Miss Jiang (Yiyan Jian). Some characters remain nameless, but feature repeatedly in the film. One such face belongs to a young boy, who reminds one of the child witness in Elim Klimov’s superlative anti-war movie Come and See and the red-clad young girl in Schindler’s List.

Chuan walks a fine line between showing and exploiting. He shows restraint when other filmmakers would be sentimental and heavy handed; the film is far removed from the sentimentalised, often melodramatic Taeguki (Je-gyu Kang, Korea) and Assembly (Xiaogang Feng, China), though it too owes something to Saving Private Ryan in its opening scenes of all out warfare. Many of its images seem to come from another world and seared into the eye: a couple of naked dead women carted away on a wheelbarrow; hundreds of Chinese soldiers executed en masse; an open window leads to an unexpected death. But Chuan never lingers and never romanticises.

Nor is Chuan a director with documentarian delusions. He is not there to tell any “true” story, much as it is based on actual documented events. He has an eye for angle and spatial arrangement, and a sure command of the close-up, a shot that is too often exploited for cheap thrills by other filmmakers. Here, a prolonged close-up demonstrates shock and grief; another, complete devotion to the Japanese cause.

City of Life and Death is harrowing viewing, expertly made. Sensitive viewers should steer clear. It is a powerful anti-war statement, graphically demonstrating how war dehumanises its participants, and is especially worth seeking out as Zhang Yimou’s award-seeking The Flowers of War (featuring Christian Bale, no less) prepares for global release in 2012.

Faces smeared with dirt

Kirk Douglas leads his men in "Paths of Glory".

The above image occurs not long into Stanley Kubrick's rather intimate anti-war film "Paths of Glory" (1957), and occurs during one of the late director's much loved tracking shots. It's one of the earliest examples of what would become a signature of the director, and a much referenced signature at that (see "Atonement"). I use intimate because, like with Melville's French resistance masterpiece "Army of Shadows", Kubrick's interest is in his protagonists' reactions to the context of warfare, and not just explosions and gunfire, making it rather contained for a war epic.

Kirk Douglas stars as Col. Dax, a principled man trapped in the French war machine during World War One. When told that he and his men need to take the German stronghold called "The Anthill" in less than two days from now, Dax understandably has his doubts. There to make sure that all goes according to plan is the dubious Gen. Mireau (George Macready), who seems to epitomise the hunger for war felt by those who never get into the fighting themselves but prefer to direct it from afar, impeccably dressed and enjoying some tea. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that the tension between Mireau and Dax will come to erupt, and indeed it happens most significantly after the battle is over and the lives of the some French soldiers hang in the balance.

Anti-war films would become something of a habit for Kubrick, whose "Dr. Strangelove" (1964) remains, like "Paths of Glory", a timeless indictment of the absurdity of war and those who manage it. With "Full Metal Jacket" (1987), Kubrick took aim on the dehumanising effect that the Vietnam war had on young American men, and shows us that the dehumanisation started on home ground already. "Paths of Glory" is easily as powerful as these films, and bears the advantage of, like "Dr. Strangelove", coming in at around 90 minutes.

This is far from the indulgences of "Barry Lyndon" and "Eyes Wide Shut", both testing my patience with their adoration of themselves. It's a lean film with the clear aim of breaking down the dominant (at the time) mythology of French heroism (which resulted in many European countries banning the film for many years). Kubrick never shows us the apparent evil, the Germans, because he is concerned with what the 'good guys' were doing to themselves. "Paths of glory" has dated incredibly well because of Kubrick's near timeless visual style, and his focus on character and theme over spectacle.

The film was a testing ground to further develop Kubrick cine-eye. Consider the image below, and see how a master arranges a shot:

Click below to watch a key scene from the film where two soldiers discuss whether death by machine gun or bayonet would be best. Ebert describes the dialogue here as approaching Shakespearean: