gexing I once lived in Nanking for almost 4 years when I was a university student. There is a John Rabe's house located nearby Nanjing Univercity(Gulou District). Everyone in my university knows the existence of Nanking maccacre in 1937, but that's just a number for us, not a vivid emotional impressions. Our propaganda department taught us to hate Japanese simpily and all the wars between China and Japan was filmed every every year. They simply mixed the Japanese militarism and the general Japanese citizens.From this movie, I can get the truth of that massacre, it's not that simple, in fact, everyone suffers a lot from that war, not only the Chinese victims but also Japnese girls or the soldriers. The war is terrible and cruel, it hurts everyone in it. As I know, from our Chinsee history, during the dynasty changing, a lot of citizens have been killed to consolidate the new born govenment. So that's not only the problem of Janpanese, I think that's the dark side of human being. When there is no constaints to the human beings, the evil will occupy the heart of human beings. I just don't want to see any war between human beings. But I know it's impossible, I just hope everyone can understand that the life and love is very valuable.

eufory One of the best war films I ever seen. Being a Chinese film is amazingly balanced. Its very difficult to maintain neutrality confronted with such a savage and cruel event. Nanjing! Nanjing! is absorbing and the black and white photography is superb. During the film you can watch how the inner forces of each character unfold. Some bring the evil within some the love and compassion within. War bring up the worst and the best of people. As Psychologist Phillip Zimbardo states; everybody has the potential to be evil given the right conditions. The film encourages us deeply to value life. As one of the Japanese characters says in the movie: "Life is more difficult than death."

eatfirst There are a rare few films that have found a way to tackle some of the greatest atrocities ever committed by and upon the human race with such searing, unflinching emotional honesty that they move beyond the categorisations of drama or war movie to something that can best be described as bearing witness. Come And See and Schindler's List belong to this exclusive group, and so too now must Lu Chuan's extraordinary and harrowing City Of Life And Death.It is 1937 in Nanking, former Chinese capital and scene of what is about to unfold as one of the greatest war-crimes in history (a massacre verging on genocide and an event which continues to sour Sino-Japanese relations to this day), but writer/director Lu Chuan is not here to analyse wider military events or stratagems. We open with the briefest glimpse of the Japanese assault on the city walls, and then before the credits have even finished rolling his camera is already patrolling the post-conflict city streets; a blasted, ruined landscape. His film picks up where the likes of The Pianist or Saving Private Ryan leave off, in the midst of a destroyed world, with the invaders and the surviving remnants of the defeated population already pitched together in a dangerous and disorientating mix of sporadic resistance battles, vast wretched prisoner encampments and perilously tenuous civilian "safety" zones.Events are told in a masterful inter-cutting of macro and micro drama. We are introduced to only a handful of identifiable characters. Amongst them a Chinese bureaucrat trying to use his position to save his family, a young boy caught up in the resistance fighting, a naive prostitute (euphemistically referred to as comfort girls), one of thousands shipped to the front-line with no idea of the horrors awaiting them, and a single Japanese soldier with some semblance of conscience amongst his savage comrades. Their desperate personal stories intertwine inside the maelstrom of chaos and horror surrounding them.The stunning black-and-white photography veers from stark, hand-held and up-close, to vast and impressionistic sweeps that depict the large-scale massacres as nightmarish visions of some biblical apocalypse. The combined effect renders the feel of the movie as both something close to a rediscovered contemporary document and personal witness testimony, the small-scale drama illuminating the large-scale atrocity that might be beyond comprehension otherwise.At times heart-stopping in its intensity and tragic almost beyond expressing. City Of Life And Death is a profoundly moving depiction of inhumanity at its most grievous. It simply should be seen.

richard6 "City of Life and Death" is one of the most powerful cinema experiences to depict both courageous and barbaric acts of humanity you may ever witness. Whether regarded as factual or fictionalised, this films weighs heavily and emotionally on the audience without obligation. Released in black and white, in documentary type reflection, Lu Chuan's film delineates the 1937 Japanese occupation of, then, China's capital Naking. Knowing full well that they were breaking international conventions of war, they disguised the massacre from the rest of the world.With severity, "City of Lfe and death" is portrayed from both a Chinese and Japanese perceptive from witnesses and testimonies gathered at the time. Alloted among hundreds of testimonial soldiers and civilians, a handful of characters proclaim the principal story. Significantly, German national John Rabe, his assistant Mr. Tang, a naïve Japanese officer named Kadokawa and various woman caught in the midst of the massacre. Prominemnely, Miss Jiang and Chinese prostitute Xiaojiang. The faculties of cruelty are manifested in ambitious scenes of either battle, civilians fleeing the fallen city and orchestrations of horrific war crimes. Most notable the massacre of Chinese Prisinors of War being machine gunned to death, buried alive, set on fire or marched into the sea. Yet, efficacious as these scenes are, the films most powerful presence is focused on the for-mentioned handful of characters who fought and died in this imposing space of urban devastation. Conspicousasly, the emotions of bravery are portrayed in these characters individually. The spirited actions of Nazi Rabe, the suicidal motivations of Mr Tang and Miss Jiang. Also, not forgetting the sacrificial act from Xiaojiang. Most notable, from my viewing perspective, is the scene where a captured Chinese solider covers a little Chinese boys eyes with his hand to blind him from his impending death. This scene is one of the most tending images I have ever witnessed on screen. Environing these scenes, the director acutely puts the atrocities on-screen without warning and without insightful rationale to understand the motivations of barbarism. In this review, I have decided not to detail these acts of humanity. After reading this review I mention favourably for the reviewer to witness this remarkable film. "City of Life and Death" easily achieves a convincible spectacle of mass atrocity and a magnitude of slaughter.