The movie I want to talk about this time is "Nanjing, Nanjing" starring , Gao Yuanyuan, and others. The Nanjing Massacre is an eternal pain in the hearts of the Chinese people. In addition to grief and anger, it is more humiliating. After all, this is the capital of a country. It gave up without any decent resistance and allowed its people to become prey under the devil's knife. For a government, this is unforgivable.
From the very beginning of the movie, I truly felt the fear and despair permeating the doomsday city exposed to wolves, the thousand-year-old city wall ravaged by shells, the abandoned army trampling on the corpses of compatriots and rout, never giving up resistance. From seeking shelter to being slaughtered, what I saw was full frontal nudity in an undefended city facing wolves. The statue of Zhongshan that collapsed to the ground was in sharp contrast to the sacrificial dance performed at the later ceremony of the Japanese occupation of Nanjing. Nanjing, which had lost the blessings of democracy, people's livelihood, and belief in civil rights, had only a group of wild beasts snaking on her naked body. This scene gave people a strong feeling. The audio-visual scenes are shocking. In the previous plot, there were several scenes where the Japanese army practiced dancing. Only then did I realize that it was not idle work. All the destruction was premeditated and prepared, and they may have been preparing to this day.
The bold thing about "Nanjing, Nanjing" is that it uses the perspective of Kadokawa, a Japanese soldier who participated in the war, to examine and judge everything that happened. I waited in vain for the fate of the male and female protagonists to intersect, but the male lead in the cast played by Liu Ye, the Chinese military officer Lu Jianxiong, died a third of the way through the film, and at this time the stories of the characters played by Gao Yuanyuan and Fan Wei were still unknown. There is no real development, so there is no real hero or heroine in this film. There is only one protagonist here, and that is this fallen city. The result of this is that the documentary color of the film is greatly enhanced, but it partially deprives the audience of the pleasure of watching the film, because there is no real climax of the plot, the rhythm lacks changes, and the depression and despair that has been pent up in the audience's hearts for two hours is not captured. The release was so effective that it later caused a slight numbness due to sensory exhaustion, thereby weakening the appeal that the film should have had.
Mr. Tang , played by Fan Wei, is the most fleshed-out character in this film. He does everything he can to protect his family's lives, even at the risk of fighting the devil. deal, but I really can’t see any reason or motivation for him to voluntarily give up the chance of survival in the end. At least there is no sufficient reason given in the film. It is precisely because of this that the scene of his separation from his wife, although Fan Wei and Qin Lan's performance was very effective, but it still failed to impress me. There is also the central character Kadokawa. I can understand that the director gave this character some humanity. In fact, the previous actions of this character are all logical, including his interaction with the Japanese comfort woman Yuriko and his admiration for Jiang Shuyun played by Gao Yuanyuan. He was successful, even to the point where he released two prisoners of war, It can be regarded as an explanation for Jiang Shuyun who died to save these two people, but it is a bit too much to ask him to commit suicide to apologize for the massacre he witnessed. As far as I know, such things are not uncommon, but the movie itself does not It didn't give me enough convincing. I think this is all the creators trying to elevate the characters.
In order to pursue the true effect of faithful recording, the film uses a large number of long shots. The most typical scene is probably the execution of Mr. Tang, from lighting cigarettes, talking, shooting, and re-shooting, to the last two Japanese. The foreground speaks, and the background is always of the half-suspended dead Mr. Tang. It is an excellent composition, and we know that it is Fan Wei who is hanging down in the background and not a double, because the lens has not been changed. The death of Jiang Shuyun later had the same effect. In that period when life was as cheap as an ant, all the deaths in the film were presented very simply, without any sloppiness. A life was deprived, it was so easy, so easy that it is shocking.
There are two parts of the video that really moved me. One is when Rabe kneeled down in front of the refugees when he left Nanjing. For a group that has completely lost the ability to protect itself and only relies on survival instincts to look for life-saving straws. That said, there is more to reflect on.That's why the Japanese sacrificial dance had such a big impact on me in the end. That kind of masculinity, that kind of order, that kind of piety were all things that the Chinese at that time did not have.
