"Life is too hard and death is too easy."

City of Life and Death (南京! 南京!)

Director: Lu Chuan (陸川)

Main Cast: Gao Yuanyuan (高圓圓), Liu Ye (劉燁), Hideo Nakaizumi (中泉英雄)

Year: 2009

There are number of reasons attracting me to watch City of Life and Death, which Chinese title literally is Nanjing! Nanjing!. I wonder how Lu Chuan, the director of Kekexili (可可西里), who is still less than 40 years old to handle the controversial Nanking Massacre; it is also interesting to see how this film is made under the censorship of Chinese government. To a certain extent, this film reveals how freedom of speech in Mainland is improved concerning something sensitive; and the film has nearly a half is from the angle of a soldier acted by Hideo Nakaizumi. How Japanese narrative towards Nanking Massacre under Lu Chuan and Chinese Censorship is definitely attractive enough.

During massacre, Chinese is shown as untouchable hero in a less propaganda way. Numbers of mass execution scenes are impressive. One of them there is a machine gun on a high point, thousands and thousands of Chinese stood downhill and we can see how domino effect occurs on death tolls. Liu Ye acts as a voluntary resistant fighter, who belongs to the last group of mass execution. In facing their death, director adopts a famous scene of Keisuke Kinoshita’s (木下惠介) Twenty-four Eyes (二十四隻眼睛). The director gives static close-up shot to different faces one by one. It is a moment we identify to our nation and the justice for mankind. They exclaim China would never fall before their death. They are right finally.

A friend tells me that there is a moment reminds him about Akira Kurosawa’s (黑澤明) Stray Dog (野良犬). I suppose he means the ending. I think they are a bit similar yet pretty enough to let me know Lu Chuan still has a distance from Akira Kurosawa. However, Lu Chuan has already made a wonderful ending in the time while life is too hard and death is too easy.

Obscure Rating: 8/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1124052/