Art House Genocide

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2014)

The Chinese don't like the Japanese very much . In fact one of the few public demonstrations allowed in China is protests outside the Japanese embassy which are very frequent . The cause of this animosity if you didn't know was down to Japan's war of aggression against China in the 1930s and 40s which involved the same type of brutality the Nazis inflicted upon Eastern Europe . Take " The Rape Of Nanking " in 1937 which saw wholesale butchery and a death toll similar to the death rate seen in present day Iraq . Except this fatality rate in Iraq happened in eleven years of civil war while in Nanking this happened in six weeks and in one city . Multiply this by several thousand times and you can just fathom the hatred the Chinese still hold for the Japanese , not helped by a mainstream denial in Japan that none of this happened
One thing THE FLOWERS OF WAR does do well is showing the brutality of the Japanese and the fear the Chinese civilian population have of their conquerers . The unfortunate thing is it doesn't do anything else very well . Watching it you get the feeling there is several artistic agendas going on such as
War porn that'll appeal to war film junkies
Art house cinema especially to those people who don't like war porn
A Chinese version SCHINDLER'S LIST where a flawed human being saves the innocent from evil
People who enjoyed the BATMAN reboot down to Christian Bale
All these aspects seem to get in the way of one another and cancel each other out which makes for a relatively unsatisfying epic movie . You can admire it in many ways but you end up admiring THE FLOWERS OF WAR more than you like it