Its based on the tragic Nanking Massacre happening on the year 1937 when the Japanese invaded China, and holy shit, you could never imagine how cruel the Japanese were back in that time period. The massacre was listed to be one of world's most cruel tragics ever happened and well i can't imagine anything crueler than that. The whole Nanking city was literally destroyed and everywhere you go, both japanese and chinese soldiers surrounds you hiding in rubbles and dead bodies, there's a high chance of your head exploding with blood splattering as the firing of bullets never stop. There's this scene where the jap soldiers continuously stabbed a certain area where a bunch of chinese happen to be hidden at, blood starting to form at their sharp blades, and also another scene where they yank a group of 13 year old girls by the hair and dragging them everywhere like animals, stripping of their clothes to rape them. The way the Chinese were tortured made me close my eyes and ears at the movie theatre cause these things scare me easily. I mean, whats life if the point of it is to 'survive', sleeping is impossible, happiness is destroyed, and you can only wake up to the sound of guns firing and look forward to the sight of piling dead bloody bodies all around your street? It makes me cringe when a chinese woman was shot in the neck and then continuously stepped with their heavy boots to her death when she was still conscious. The way the japanese soldiers torture and slaughtered these poor people as if its no big deal terrifies me. War does that to people, your first kill might cause you to feel guilty, but with that situation surrounding you, your sanity is destroyed.
To be honest, if i were in their shoes, i would have committed suicide earlier to avoid undergoing the pain. Even witnessing that 8 years (i think) suffering in 3 hours through a screen scares me to hell, i don't even want to think who those people handle that situation.
Another confession, i used to hate the fact that i am chinese for a lot of reasons, but after watching this and discovering the numerous pain and suffers us chinese have gone through, I'm starting to feel more proud of my race.
This century is what we called the Chinese century. Our people are slowly dominating the world, not those white drunkards or Little Japanese people any more.
ReplyDeleteBesides, the culture of those white monkeys aren't as what you think is 'great' when they only can drink, have sex and bitch around.
Hey Sel, good to read that you got to take something good in the form of self-esteem and pride out of this movie, which is truly hard to watch at certain scenes. I think it's a tribute to these women in general showing them with such pride and srength even in the most awful of situations. As a woman you just can't help but to admire that.
ReplyDeleteBut whoa, that comment above just scared me like crazy. Insulting other cultures while this movie and Zhang Yimou himself - as patriotic as he can be at times - stands for intercultural communication and against the hate-filled mindset that leads to such cruel behavior.
I hope that's also one message you could take out of the movie - unlike the person above.