Story finds beauty amid wartime horror
Christian Bale is impressive in drama set in China during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre
If you stick around long enough in Hollywood, things start to repeat. I don’t just mean Spider- Man reboots, though that happens. I’m talking about things like Michael Caine making Sleuth with Laurence Olivier in 1972, then doing it again ( in Olivier’s role) with Jude Law 35 years later.
In this case, the déjà vu is a little more oblique. In 1987, 13- year- old Christian Bale played a young English boy caught up in the 1941 Japanese invasion of Shanghai. The Flowers of War brings him back to live out the infamous Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanjing, which took place in 1937.
The historical record, told in numerous features and documentaries, includes efforts by Western entrepreneurs, doctors and missionaries to safeguard the citizens.
In one of history’s great ironies, a Nazi businessman named John Rabe helped organize the Nanjing Safety Zone, which saved thousands of lives.
The Flowers of War, directed by Yimou Zhang ( House of Flying Daggers), tells a more modest but still moving story, adapted from Geling Yan’s novel, The 13 Flowers of Nanjing. Bale plays John Miller, an American mortician dispatched to bury the priest at a girl’s convent. He arrives just as Japanese forces storm the city, and winds up taking shelter with a gaggle of students and their ineffectual young chaperone, George.
John’s first thought is to get paid and get out. “It’s a Catholic Church; there’s gotta be some cash inside,” he insists over George’s protests to the contrary. When the sanctuary is next breached by a bevy of prostitutes, led by the sultry English- speaking Yu Mo ( Ni Ni), he starts to reconsider.
In many ways, The Flowers of Nanjing mirrors the recent Holocaust film, In Darkness, in which a Polish sewer worker harbours Jewish refugees, first for monetary gain, but eventually, because it’s the right thing to do. Like that character, John’s conversion is aided when he witnesses acts of horrible violence, including the attempted rape and murder of the schoolgirls.
His decision to don the robes of the priest and order the soldiers to leave buys him a little time, but it also convinces him that a Western clergyman might be the only thing that can save the unlikely collection of females under this roof. ( The invaders, wary of international condemnation, were deferential to foreigners.)
Zhang, an accomplished but occasionally showy filmmaker, seems to enjoy finding beauty in this wartime story, and not just in the prostitutes. There are striking slow- motion explosions, and a recurring motif of images seen through stained- glass windows. One protracted scene involving a lone Chinese soldier taking on a Japanese battalion may strain credulity, but the combination of cinematic tension and military creativity is spellbinding.
John’s mission of mercy takes a mysterious turn when a cultured Japanese officer ( Atsuro Watabe) marches into the church, plays the piano, apologizes for the earlier atrocities, and posts guards outside the convent walls — although whether to keep looters out or the Christians in is uncertain.
Colonel Hasegawa is the man’s name, but General Enigma might be a better fit.
When John realizes the man’s ultimate designs for them, he concocts an escape plan that would be farcical, if the situations weren’t so serious.
The film was China’s official entry in the Oscars this year, although it didn’t make the final cut. It’s a moving story with a few flaws, not least having one of the convent girls serve as an occasional narrator.
But Bale is always impressive to watch, and he shows that he hasn’t lost his childlike ability to carry a story about conflict in the Far East.