Go see it

Rating: 9/10 (3 January 2012)

I am a Chinese. But I have to admit that I am neither a big fan of Zhang nor of the Chinese cinematography. Except for few excellent works, I found the recent Chinese film industry willingly or unwillingly distances itself from the audience, by making Hollywood-style, big budget, all-star cast, but empty-content and cliché-plot movies. Where are the Chinese movie makers' ideas? Why did they give up finding stories in Chinese history and instead they chase some intangible sci-fis to burn some money? Nan Jing is always a sad place to visit and its history during the sino-jp war is forever a scar in the Chinese. For Jp, an industrialized great power that even beat Russia once, must realize that a fast complete annexation of China is nearly impossible, the huge resistance and a large area of territory that China possessed was way out of Jp capacity. The astronomical Chinese manpower would outrun every Jp technological advantage and eventually turn the table. So the Jp did one thing they could think of - instill fear and horror in the Chinese and wear their resistance down. War crimes - killing, looting and raping could do that and the Jp wanted double of it to get the effect. It is imaginable that the Jp army on one hand would officially blame such behaviors (because of their culture of being respectful and polite) and on the other hand closed one eye for them, perhaps even promoted and encouraged them.
That was Jp. Chinese, they were victims. Period.
An American in China at that time kind of enjoyed immunity from the brutality and had a neutral status.
So these summarized the positions of all people in the film. I can speak for myself, even though I tried to contain my reaction during the viewing I still have been hit head-on by the emotion. It is Chinese Schindler's list. In this case however, those women were more the "Schindlers" than Bale's John don't you think, although John also did a great humanitarian deed.
Pros of the film. I think first is the story itself. A moving story of those women and girls, a realistic account of the jp war crime and a faithful reflection of the fear during the war. True, some of the elements in the plot are predictable, but not the ending of it. At the end of the day, this work is a movie, and a movie needs something unpredictable out of cliché or Hollywood.
Also, the structure of the film is very ideal. Enough time is given to elaborate on the sub-stories, although in my opinion, the ending bit can still be more elaborate.
The characters are also very "human". They were quite free of the stereotype Chinese film mindset here, which I think is the second good thing about this film. To name two things about that "free of stereotype", they showed self-preservation, the girls, the women, Mr Meng and more importantly, John all have it. You know, self-preservation is generally considered as selfishness and one of the personality weakness according to the modern Chinese ideology, which promote the collective greater good is above individual well-being. Being self-preserved at that time is frequently associated with being traitor. And you can expect, self-preservation is rarely seen in Chinese films about sino-jp war. That, in my opinion, is one of the distances I mentioned earlier that the Chinese movie makers created in their "patriotically educational" movies. That is simply not very "human". But I can find it here and that adds up to the credibility of the account.
The second one was the women group itself. They are, because of their profession, always depicted as no soul, no feeling, full of vanity and selfish in Chinese culture, and more, they were non-political. This story also quoted one of the mostly quoted Chinese poems in the end to remind us of that last point. The catch of this film is to challenge that opinion. Like in the La Dame aux camélias, they have emotions, human feelings like you and me, "they love and hate". It is overkill to discuss whether they should be patriotic and do something about the war. Simply being themselves (OK, in the film, acting like ones), they can convince the rest of us already.
Second, the acting. Christian Bale, in my opinion, is getting better and better since his Batman the Legend begins. True, Liam Neeson is still THE Schindler. But Bale has his shot. John's submission in front of the Jp is very well portrayed by Bale's hard but meanwhile sad face. And Bale also has the eyes to tell those stories when he tried to cover up those women's imminent "going to hell" event before the girls. In comparison to the similar looking Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who also associates himself with sino-culture, I think I prefer Bale's a little darker and sadder presence.
The women, they deserved three hurra both for their characters and for their acting. A piece of information, the Chinese generally considers women from the vicinity of Shanghai are "mean". I am not saying this is true, but it adds to their characters when I looked at them. They were really mean sometimes weren't they? If you think so too, you should realize what these 12 actress have done to you : )
OK, some minor cons. Yes, the girls and women played their parts well when the horror kicks in. But remember those scenes from Schindler's list? The trembling teeth of the Jewish youth, the little girl in the s* hole, those widely open eyes in the shower room. Few can convey fear in films like Spielberg. Zhang here is on the right track in the right direction, but not yet close.
Also, the young actors and actresses are promising, but still have room to perfect their skill. The depiction of fear, again, still showed some artificiality.
Go see it!