Nanking

Documentarians Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman brilliantly combine archival footage from Japan’s 1937 massive attack on China’s former capital of Nanking with heartbreaking interviews of Chinese survivors, guilty Japanese soldiers, and actors giving stage readings from the diaries of Westerners who created a safety zone to protect 250,000 Chinese people. The lesson that war is always a crime is hammered home in the recounting of horrible atrocities that curdle the blood. Actors including Stephen Dorff, John Getz, Mariel Hemmingway, Woody Harrelson, and Jurgen Prochnow portray Westerners who formed the Safety Zone Committee to provide a safe place for refugees in spite of its rejection from the Japanese government. "Nanking" was inspired by Iris Chang’s book "The Rape of Nanking," about the systematic rape of tens of thousands of Chinese women ranging in age from very young to very old. Philip Marshall’s unobtrusive score, performed by the Kronos Quartet, tempers the film’s often disturbing and painful content that is nevertheless an essential part of our understanding our modern times through the prism of history.
Not Rated. 91 mins. (A) (Five Stars)