Movie review: 'Nanking'

"Nanking" (Credit: Thinkfilm)

3 stars (out of four)

Among its other accomplishments, Ken Burns’ recent series on public television reminded a lot of us that our knowledge of World War II history is sadly sketchy.

In a more modest vein, but with similar eye-opening importance, the much shorter “Nanking” sheds light on particular wartime atrocities largely neglected in the collective memory. For Americans, that’s partly because the events occurred in 1937, before the U.S. entered the conflict. Also, the facts are disputed in Japan, where some question the later military tribunal’s statistic that 200,000 victims were killed during the Japanese siege and occupation of Nanking, China’s capital city at the time. In any event, multitudes were slaughtered and raped, and whatever the numbers, testimony cited in “Nanking” portrays the episode as a horrifying chapter in man’s renowned inhumanity to man.

Borrowing the technique of mixing documentary with actors portraying key characters popularized by the likes of playwright Emily Mann in modern theater, “Nanking” blends stark, evocative archival footage with first-hand accounts recited by Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Stephen Dorff, Jurgen Prochnow and John Getz, who take on the roles of Westerners who strove to spare the native citizenry. Made up of missionaries, professors, physicians and business people, this small group created a safety zone that housed Nanking refugees and saved lives, though many others were still lost.

There are also interviews with survivors, whose narratives of cruelty are shocking, and even one Japanese soldier’s reminiscence of his own participation in rape—a brief, graphic portrait of the banality of evil. The ghastly stories of rape involve girls as young as 13, and victims of violence include people doused with oil and set on fire, some pictured in footage used at the time to try and end the horror.

Among those Westerners who resisted were Minnie Vautrin (Hemingway), a missionary who later committed suicide, and John Rabe (Prochnow), a German and Nazi sympathizer, who, after returning home and protesting, was persecuted by the Gestapo as a thanks.

sismith@tribune.com

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