The Flowers of War
Dir: Zhang Yimou
2011
**
Director Yimou Zhang once was quoted as saying; "For thousands of years, there's been a tradition of teaching us in China to think in terms of the collective experience, so we are rarely able to act in accordance with personal desires or emotions. Now young people, especially under Western influences, have become much more interested in themselves and their own values". This answers and dissolves my biggest problem that I had with this film and that was the actions of its characters. That said, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the film as a whole. As you can clearly tell from the title of the film, this is an example of the good, the opposite of the atrocities of war that can and do happen. The sacrifices people make for each other, the beauty in humanity in contrast with the very worst of humanity, whenever there is a horrible moment in history there is also a good story to come out of it. Unfortunately, this story has been manipulated. The invasion of Nanking where 300,000 people were massacred and 20,000 women were raped is not the typical war story you might have heard from your Granddad. This is the very worst of war, if you are going to tell the story you have to be accurate without being gratuitous or disrespectful to those who were there and unfortunately this is where the film fails for me. Yimou Zhang is a visual master but he makes beautiful of what should remain ugly. Christian bale puts in a great performance but the nascent conscience of the white 'big nose' Westerner is surely the wrong story to tell in the circumstances. Vivid and beautiful but woefully misplaced, I'll be honest and say it is an entertaining film but it is wrong.