Review of Nanking (2007) by Chads. — 30 Apr 2008

In Atom Egoyan's "Ararat", the Canadian filmmaker depicted the Armenian massacre at the hands of Muslim Turks, as a film within a film, a reenactment in front of a Armenian director's rolling cameras.

To show the true face of genocide without some sort of distnaciation is unfilmable. "Nanking" knows this. That's why "Nanking", narratively, bears a striking resemblance to Mario Van Peebles' "Badassssss!"".

And like Louis Malle's "Vanya on 42nd Street", the filmmaker shows the actors' arrival at the set before they settle into their respective characters. And sure enough, "Nanking" can't help but feel like theater(or more to the point, performance art), when recognizable actors such as Woody Harrelson and Mariel Hemingway deliver dramatic readings of their real life counterparts, alongside newsreel footage of war atrocities, and the testimonies of actual witnessess to said war atrocities.

They're a necessary evil. So deal with it. Without names, however, "Nanking" wouldn't get the funding, or make the art-house circuit, or receive a proper DVD release. But because the story of Japanese occupation in China's capitol is such a horrific account to stomach, the actors do eventually disappear into character.

Ultimately, what matters is that the story gets out to the uninitiated. Knowing what you now know about the Japanese during wartime, you'll never look at their national cinema in the same way. Especially the films of Yasujiro Ozu.

Now that you know, they'll look like propaganda films.