Film Review: Three Days in Nanking

The siege of the Chinese capital of Nanking in 1937, in which 300,000 civilians were killed by the Japanese army, has been chronicled in a number of dramas and documentaries–but none as lush and majestic as this recent Chinese epic. Filmed in elegiac black and white hues, City of Life and Death follows the three-day siege from the initial invasion to its conclusive killing fields. With more archetypes–the regretful Japanese soldier, the saintly Chinese mother–than characters, the film can be heavy-handed and overly brutal, but the cumulative, unflinching results befit such a harrowing tragedy.

<object width=”400″ height=”233″>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/q90R13aMwbA?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0″>
<param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”>
<param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”>
<embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/q90R13aMwbA?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”400″ height=”233″ allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”>
</object>


<a title=”168-cover-thumb.jpg” href=”https://www.utne.com/archives/table-of-contents-november-december-2011.aspx”>
</a>Have something to say? <a title=”Send a letter to editor@utne.com” href=”mailto:editor@utne.com”>
Send a letter to editor@utne.com
</a>. This article first appeared in the November-December 2011 issue of <a title=”Utne Reader” href=”https://www.utne.com/subscribe/subscribe.aspx?promocode=EUTDNAZ2″ target=”_blank”>
Utne Reader
</a>.