Review of Nanking (2007) by Janschied — 06 Aug 2009

This documentary is well made. However, another exactly similar documentary was already made and shown sometime ago concerning Japanes "war crimes". (There were many). Somehow, this film doesn't have any of the impact of the former - nor does it carry the impact or inspiration of its precursor book, The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang.

It hardly explains the why's of the atrocity. It does a good job of presenting the chronology of the events- and most of these are done so in a very moving way. The narrating actors are generally good to superflous - but, on the whole, they really add nothing to the story.

The interviews with Chinese victims are very poignant - the ones with Japanese soldiers are repugnant - not one of these old men demonstrate a drop of remorse - and this is manipulation. Other records show that there was and is a great amount of rethinking on the part of these common soldier perpetrators.

Lawrence Rees's recent book on the World War 2 Japanese armies is a good starting point. In summary, a satisfactory attempt about a difficult and relatively unknown terrible crime among many that has gone mostly unpunished.

Chang's book "The Rape of Nanking" is a much better introduction to this compelling subject.