City of Life and Death

I have posted many foreign films on this blog.  Primarily, because it’s a great time on Netflix.  The American movies are dreadful and mostly low budget crap you would have ignored at the video store (RIP Video Stores).  But the foreign films offers a cornucopia of new voices, visions and POV’s that are both profound and universal.  Today, I would introduce 2009’s City of Life and Death, directed by Chuan Lu, one of China’s youngest promising directors.

City of Life and Death is about the Invasion and occupation of China by the Japanese, in particular, the city on Nanking.  The movie is shot in black and white and is as brutal as Schindler’s List with beautiful vision and horrific shock! 

The shock to me and why I watched it was my consistent romanticizing of the Samurai culture.  Yes, I love Samurai movies.  However, the atrocities of Japan inflicted to both China and Korea seems like the remnants of that Samurai culture and a country that paid homage to warrior and his bloody and proud lifestyle.

The following scene is towards the third act of the movie in where Japan is celebrating their occupation of Nanking.  PLEASE NOTE: the dance is not historically correct.  However, director Lu is trying to portray the romanticizing of the Samurai culture.  Many Japanese consider this scene a propagandist and incorrect scene but the poetry of what the director is conveying is riveting. 

City of Life and Death is not an easy movie to see.  But to understand China and Korea’s continued animosity towards Japan is explained a little bit more.  And reflecting on the romanticizing of the Samurai culture makes you think twice.  One last thing, Japan gives the world hope.  When you see how brutal their society was and how they have evolved now, the world can feel comfort in the fact that societies can change for the better.