Review of John Rabe (2009) by Ted P — 26 Sep 2010

The quintessential "good Nazi" story. To summerize the film in a very distasteful and inappropriate way that in no way does it justice: this film is the "Schindler's List of Nanking". John Rabe, a member of the Nazi party, is the head of the Sieman's China and has been, for the last 27 years, in charge of developing a dam in a developing nation when he is given the order to shut the business and move back to Berlin as the Japanese army approaches Nanking. The movie progresses in a very familiar way. Rabe begins as a naive Nazi party member who seems to be rather dismissive of the people he has been working amongst for the last three decades, treating them like children, but eventually, seeing the horrors of Japanese army, becomes more and more convinced of his duty to help the civilians. The change is not a radical one and we can see Rabe's humane attitude from the very beginning when he shelters fleeing Chinese civilians by hiding them under a Nazi flag, few will miss the irony of this.

The rest of the movie works on the irony of a Nazi member saving human lives since it is Rabe's membership in the Nazi party that allows him to get away with sheltering hundreds upon thousands of Chinese civilians from the brutal Japanese imperial force, none of the other internationals in the city would have been able to get away with that. Yet this human side is for the large extent of the film contrasted with Rabe's naive belief that his leader, Hitler, a man whose followers will in only a few short years show the same kind of brutality as the Imperial Japanese army at Nanking, will get involved to stop this humanitarian crisis. Daniel Bruhl makes a strong appearance in the movie (what recent German film has he NOT been in?) as a far more aware German diplomat who falls in love with a local Chinese girl. Steve Buscemi also makes a strong presence as the sole American doctor in the city in charge of dealing with seemingly insurmountable horror.

Most people have heard of Nanking, chiefly due to the book "Rape of Nanking", yet just as many, if not more, may know that murder was committed there but are entirely ignorant of the scale of the atrocities, where upwards of 300,000 civilians were slaughtered. If one is not going to read the book, it would do good to at least see this so as to become aware... images can often put better perspective on horror than words.