Film Review: Nanking

 Nanking.  Directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman. Written by Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman and Elisabeth Bentley. (2007). With the participation of Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Jurgen Prochnow and others.

Japanese Invade China August 1937

In August 1937 the Japanese Army invaded China, bombarding Shanghai first, and when that city had fallen, headed for the lovely old capital city of Nanking. What followed there in December 1937 has come to be known as the Rape of Nanking, during which upwards of 200,000 civilians were slaughtered and at least 20,000 women and girls were raped.  The exact facts of these horrific war crimes are still debated by the Japanese and the Chinese.

Unusual Use of Actors in Documentary

This documentary is unusually powerful and effective because it makes use of actors who read the testimonies of people who survived those terrible days.   A number of Westerners lived in Nanking at the time, some of them businesspeople, some missionaries.  While many people fled the city as the Japanese approached, 22  Westerners remained and created a Safety Zone in the western section of the city. There they intended to shelter and protect those Chinese who were too poor to flee.  They kept diaries of their memories and one of them made a movie of the hospital they established there.

Surivors of Nanking Give Testimony

The actors selected to read these testimonies bear an uncanny resemblance to the real human beings they are embodying.  The directors have also located survivors of the Nanking massacre who share their memories of what happened to them. One man weeps as he remembers his mother, bleeding from bayonet wounds, trying to breast feed his infant brother, who had also been stabbed with a bayonet. As he watched his mother died in front of him. The mixture of spoken testimony by actors and the survivors telling their memories is chillingly powerful. 

No One Wants to be Accountable for the Madness

The Rape of Nanking, was one of those situations during which those with weapons lose control and madness ensues. We have seen it in My Lai, in Rwanda, throughout Bosnia and Srebenica, and in Cambodia.  Any discipline that was present is lost, and the most vile atrocities are perpetrated included rape, mutilation and the burning of bodies. Hell has descended to earth.  Is it any wonder that no one wants to be accountable for it? Because if it cannot really be understood, how can one stand up and take responsibility for it?

Atrocity and War Crimes –the Dark Underbelly of War

Atrocity and the loss of control are the dark underbelly of war, that which no one really wants to talk about.  We train soldiers to kill and try to keep the impulse to kill under control with codes of honor, rank, discipline, War crimes conventions.  As long as we practice armed warfare, as long as we send our sons and daughters off into the fog of war,  the beast of slaughter, rape and atrocity is lurking, ready to escape when we least expect it.   It cannot be tamed.

The Goodness of Some Humans Emerges

What we can be grateful for, however, is the group of people who had the courage to create the Safety Zone in Nanking and who put their lives on the line for their fellows.  Let us celebrate their capacity for goodness, for surely this is the essence of what it is to be human.

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