Introduction
Today let’s take a brief introduction of a famous Chinese movie named “The Flowers of War”.Based on Yan Geling‘s novel “13 Flowers of Nanjing,” the Nanjing massacre plays front and center in director Zhang Yimou‘s tale.
Zhang Yimou’s great gift for stories of resilient women serves him well in “The Flowers of War,” a uniquely harrowing account of the rape of Nanjing. Simultaneously florid and gritty, this fictitious drama about convent students and prostitutes hiding together from the 1937 Japanese onslaught is a work of often garish dramatic flourishes yet undeniable emotional power, finding humor and heartbreak in a tale of unlikely heroism in close quarters.
Making his way through the bombed-out rubble of Nanjing, American mortician John Miller (Bale) arrives at a cathedral to attend to a recently deceased priest. To the dismay of the church’s boy warden, George, and the dozen or so adolescent girl students in his care, Miller turns out to be a genially lazy opportunist who immediately plunders the communion wine supply.
When a small army of courtesans barge into the church seeking sanctuary from the Japanese, who have overtaken the city, Miller is delighted at the prospect of his own personal harem and flirts aggressively with the only one who can speak English, Yu Mo (Ni Ni). Knowing the Japanese won’t attack a white man, Yu demands that Miller help her and the other women escape Nanjing, while George similarly begs him to help shield the students.
Zhang entertainingly tracks the tensions among this strange gathering of individuals, even staging a near-catfight between the indignant students and their diva-like guests. But the infighting comes to an end when Japanese troops invade the church and, not realizing there are courtesans hiding in the vicinity, try to force themselves on the students – a sickening scene marked by the girls’ screams and the sounds of clothing being ripped, all whipped into a frenzy of terror. Yet the attackers are momentarily held at bay when Miller, in a moment of moral courage finds a way to stop their assault.
Scene by scene, “The Flowers of War” is an erratic and ungainly piece of storytelling, full of melodramatic twists and grotesque visual excesses, which are nonetheless delivered with startling conviction. Zhang has no interest in sparing the viewer’s sensitivity, and his willingness to push past the limits of good taste is what paradoxically lends his film a curious integrity.
On the surface, the most problematic element of Liu Heng’s screenplay (adapted from Yan Geling’s novel “13 Flowers of Nanjing”) is the familiar manner in which it uses a white American character as an entry point for Western audiences. Yet Miller turns out to be just one figure in a panorama that distributes dramatic weight evenly across the board, and allows the students and especially the courtesans to perform unexpected, deeply moving acts of decency and self-sacrifice. While not every character is individuated in the film’s large ensemble, the viewer emerges with a sense of a vibrant and varied human tapestry whose colors glow all the brighter in the wake of impending catastrophe.
Twenty-four years after starring as a young lad trapped in Japan-occupied China in “Empire of the Sun,” Bale has fun playing Miller as a loutish, liquored-up rascal early on before slowly becoming a figure of integrity and fatherly tenderness, a transformation managed by sheer force of movie-star charisma more than anything else. The actor blends in surprisingly well with the mostly non-pro distaff cast, including 23-year-old newcomer Ni, who comes off as stilted in her English dialogue scenes but charges her other moments with a quiet, radiant dignity.
Other thesps who register strongly include Atsuro Watabe as a Japanese colonel with a deceptively kind, cultured appearance; Tong Dawei as a heroic Chinese soldier who protects the church with his dying breath; 13-year-old Zhang Xinyi as the brave young student who narrates much of the drama; and Cao Kefan as her desperate, hapless father, a role virtually identical to the one played by dead ringer Fan Wei in “City of Life and Death.”
The film’s reported $100 million budget is entirely evident in its large-scale battle sequences, shot and staged with intense verisimilitude and impressive spatial coherence. Yohei Taneda’s production design, particularly his set for the cavernous cathedral space, repeats a staggering feat of period reconstruction in the streets of Nanjing itself. Chan Quigang’s score is effective but goes a bit heavy on the violins.
Jīnlíng Shísān Chāi — The Flowers of War
The Flowers of War (Chinese: 金陵十三钗; pinyin: Jīnlíng Shísān Chāi), is a 2011 Chinese historical drama war film directed by Zhang Yimou who is considered as the best director in China, starring Christian Bale, Ni Ni, Zhang Xinyi, Tong Dawei, Atsuro Watabe, Shigeo Kobayashi and Cao Kefan.
Zhang Yimou, Christian Bale and Ni Ni
It is set in 1937, Nanjing, China, during the “Rape of Nanjing”, at the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War. A group of escapees, finding sanctuary in a church compound, try to survive the plight and persecution brought on by the violent invasion of the city. The film is based on the novel 13 Flowers of Nanjing, by Geling Yan.
Novel: 13 flowers of Nanjing
It was selected as the Chinese entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, but did not make the final shortlist. It also received a nomination for the 69th Golden Globe Awards. The 6th Asian Film Awards presented The Flowers of War with several individual nominations, including Best Film. On November 7, 2011, it was announced that the film’s North American distribution rights were acquired by Wrekin Hill Entertainment, in association with Row 1 Productions, leaving The Flowers of War to a limited release in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco for late December, 2011, and expanding into the following year. Limited release for Washington, D.C., Hawaii, and Virginia commenced on January 20, 2012.
Box office:
The Flowers of War was released in China just days after the 74th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre. In its first four days of release, it took in $24 million at the box office. It was named the top-grossing Chinese film of 2011, having earned $70 million after two weeks, beating the previous title-holder Beginning of the Great Revival, which grossed $62 million. 17 days ahead, the movie had grossed up to $83 million, making it the sixth-highest grossing film in China, following American exports such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($145.5 million) and Avatar ($204 million). After five weeks of release the movie earned $93 million in China.
