Product Description
No words can describe the horrors chronicled in City of Life and Death, a dramatic recount of the Rape of Nanking. Directed by Lu Chuan (Kekexili: Mountain Patrol), the film takes an unflinching look at the atrocities that took place during a six-week period starting December 1937, where mass amount of Chinese civilians were executed by the Japanese army, and where thousands and thousands of women were captured and raped, in the fallen capital of China. Bearing a concise yet aptly emphatic Chinese title of Nanking! Nanking!, the film is artistically accomplished and emotionally gripping. Nevertheless, the director's greatest achievement is to let the events unfold by themselves, in a matter-of-fact manner. Remarkably for a Chinese film on the subject, City dwells on neither sentimental excess nor nationalist indignation, and has even incorporated the perspective of a Japanese soldier amongst its major characters.
