Powerful Chinese film in Corrie

On Sunday 8th May at 8.00pm in Corrie and Sannox village hall, the Corrie Film Club will be showing an extraordinary film from China. City of Life and Death, directed by Lu Chuan, is no little arthouse affair, though it is shot in black and white. It had a budget of 12 million US dollars, and within three weeks of its release in April 2009 (in 4 languages) it had earned 20 million dollars.

City of Life and Death, Lu Chuan’s third feature film, is set in 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and deals with what is commonly referred to as the Nanking Massacre. This appalling episode occurred after the Imperial Japanese Army had captured Nanking, at that time the capital of the Republic of China. For several terrifying weeks they killed massive numbers of Chinese prisoners of war and civilians.

The film’s plot centres on a Chinese Nationalist soldier, Lu Jianxiong, with his comrade Zhao, who have been keeping up a guerrilla resistance to the invaders but are themselves captured by Japanese Imperial troops. All the revolutionary soldiers are marched out to the beach to be killed in a mass execution, but Zhao survives, along with a young boy soldier called Ida Xiaodouzi. Both of them flee to the Nanking Safety Zone run Dr. John Rabe, a German business man (and Nazi party member) as well as other Westerners.

Dr. Rabe is ordered back to Germany because his activities with the safety zone are harming the relationship between Nazi Germany and Japan, so the refuge is closed. The Japanese begin to hunt down any men that look like soldiers. Kadokawa, who is in charge of the extermination squad, is undergoing a mental crisis. He releases Zhao and Ida, telling them that life is more difficult than death, then kills himself to escape from his guilt.

The closing credits to this brutal yet life-affirming film reveal that it is in no way fictional. In 2009, Ida Xiaodouzi was still alive. And in the memories of people in the Far East, the Nanking Massacre will never die.