|Woody Harrelson||Bob Wilson|
|Mariel Hemingway||Minnie Vautrin|
|Jürgen Prochnow||John Rabe|
|John Getz||George Fitch|
|Stephen Dorff||Lewis Smythe|
|Rosalind Chao||chang Yu Zheng|
|Chris Mulkey||Mills McCallum|
|Directed by||Dan Sturman, Bill Gutenberg|
“If only,” says Minnie Vautrin (Mariel Hemingway), the missionary headmistress who tried to protect the girls in her care from the Japanese invaders of Nanking in 1937, “the thoughtful people of Japan knew the details.”
In that winter, after months of siege, the Japanese took the then capital of China in an assault that chills the blood and beggars the imagination even now. The shelling and bombing pulverized the city and brought it to its knees. Those who could, both Chinese and foreigners, fled. The victorious Japanese army swept into Nanking and commenced a sadistic orgy of murder, rape, and torture of the civilian population. No one was spared, not old people, not little girls, not babies who were skewered on bayonets.
Then, as now, most Japanese at home refused to credit such horrific reports, and dismissed them as propaganda. Japanese soldiers would not be capable of such things, they said. But the evidence is there, in contraband black-and-white film footage shot and smuggled out by a handful of Westerners who stayed on to help, and in their contemporaneous journals and letters home. Using these materials, along with contemporary interviews, directors Bill Gutenberg and Dan Sturman have assembled a truly shocking and eye-opening indictment of the horrors of that horrific occupation.
The documentary begins with a group of actors assembling on a sound stage to read the words of the handful of heroic missionaries, doctors, and businessmen who risked their lives to stay in Nanking when their colleagues evacuated. “The rich are fleeing,” notes John Rabe (Jurgen Prochnow), a Nazi businessman who protected hundreds of Chinese on his estate, and wrote to Hitler asking for help. “The poor remain behind. Shouldn’t I stay to help them?” Bob Wilson (Woody Harrelson), an American missionary doctor who was the only Western surgeon remaining in the city, remarks “Leaving now would be passing up an opportunity for service of the highest level.”
This small group of 22 European and American expatriates, in defiance of Japanese orders, established a Safe Zone within the city. They packed into it as many Chinese civilians as they could. The zone was not entirely respected by the marauding soldiers, but it saved many lives.
Many, many more were lost. At the later war crimes tribunal, it was estimated that “the total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. Approximately 20,000 case of rape occurred in the city during the first month of the occupation.”
There are some fascinating interviews with Chinese victims and Japanese invaders who are still alive today. An old Japanese soldier who was a part of the occupying force remembers the mass executions. “It was easy to dispose of them, thousands at a time.” Another reflects on the violations of the Chinese girls: “Nothing good came of raping them,” he recalls sadly, noting that it’s not so much fun if both parties aren’t enjoying it. A Chinese survivor, his eyes glistening with tears as he remembers the horrors of seventy years ago, describes seeing his mother hacked to death while she nursed his baby brother. Wilson, the doctor, tells of standing helpless as the sick and wounded were dragged from his hospital and slaughtered. The film footage that Gutenberg and Sturman have tracked down and assembled from archives in Asia, Europe, and America shows horrors not easily forgotten.
The Westerners who remained through what became knows as the Rape of Nanking paid a heavy emotional price. MissVautrin stayed on until 1940, when she suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to America. A year later she committed suicide, unable to live with the memory of the girls she had not been able to save. Dr. Wilson and Herr Rabe also left that same year. Rabe went back to Germany, where he sent Hitler some of the film footage he had been able to smuggle out of China. He was promptly arrested and thrown in jail. Years after the war, the people of Nanking learned that Rabe was living in poverty in Germany. They raised money for him, which allowed him to live out his remaining years in some comfort. “You are the Living Buddha to 100,000 people,” they told him.
Gutenberg and Sturman have put together a powerful indictment of a shameful chapter of 20th century warfare. . In revisiting it, they remind us that modern warfare may have changed, but human nature is not so very different. When we hear of atrocities and torture happening under our watch, we have to be vigilant and vocal. It is not just the thoughtful people of Japan, but all of us, who need to know the details. The lesson here is not simply to vilify the Japanese soldiers of that era, but to make sure that we never forget who we are and what our country stands for today.
© Text 2008 Jonathan Richards - Filmfreak.be