flixtime

For two-plus hours my television screen became a time-machine and I sat transfixed as I was drawn into a nightmare...

I know this film has been mentioned in the Asian cinema thread and elsewhere too perhaps, but having just watched it, I think China's CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH (2009) is very much deserving of its own thread.

The subject of this film is the infamous massacre of Nanking city's people by Japanese troops in 1937. Director Lu Chuan (KEKEXILI, MISSING GUN) shows that the five-year gap since KEKEXILI was well worth the wait. CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH ranks right there with the best of cinema in 2009!

The film - shot in exquisite black & white - opens with...well, basically it can been referred to as an extended set-piece that runs at least forty minutes (if I remember right), and it basically covers the Japanese army's securing of the city. Though it isn't all battle scenes, this opening portion can be seen as an equivalent to the opening set-piece in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN...I don't mean to say that they are equivalents in the action/battle sense but more as openings to a movie that just drop you right into a moment in time and history. The excellence is just not limited to the opening portions though...and what I'll label as the "drum scene" is as powerful a combination of sound and images as I've seen this year.

Given the Asian holocaust subject matter/SCHINDLER'S LIST-style treatment, CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH is most certainly not a "fun" watch. Though I find myself starting to have mixed feelings nowadays about Holocaust-type films in general, I still do believe that Director Lu Chuan deserves great credit for his handling of matters in CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH.

Doing some checking after watching the movie, I was curious as to the Oscar potential of the film. I hadn't any recall of hearing CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH mentioned for consideration. Now I see why and that is because China sent FOREVER ENTHRALLED instead...though I have the DVD, I haven't watched it, but from what I gather it is a rather typical biopic. From reading, was CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH perhaps considered a China/Hong Kong co-production so it wasn't considered for submission by China...don't know really, but I'm curious if there is any official word on why it might have been bypassed. I recall Eastwood's LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA won the best foreign picture award from Japan's Academy Awards; I think CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH is a significantly better film...

As to the DVD, I have the Hong Kong release. I know there were at least two mainland China releases include a 2-disc with more extras than the Hong Kong version. If anyone has the mainland release, I'm curious about one thing. You know during the movie where they show the hand-written postcard shots early on and later maybe once in a while, well though the cards are written in English, I found them very difficult to read. I know you don't really need to read them as they just sort of introduce the following scene, and even making a few words out is good enough to get an idea of things. But, by any chance, were they subbed on the mainland release(s)? They weren't subbed on the Hong Kong DVD and maybe, at least a little bit, it might have been nice if they were.

manicsounds

ya, no subs on extras, which is disappointing, but still ordered a copy not too long ago.

Also available on Bluray from Hong Kong

Rypro 525

damn, another movie to add to the xmas list. I assume the subs are decent/very good on the HK release right?

dleedlee

The postcards are difficult to read but on second viewing not a problem. I have the single disc mainland version, but the later issued 2 disc version includes some deleted scenes (for violence,e.g., a beheading, as I recall).
You might also check out COW, a nice companion piece to CITY.
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117...goryid=31&cs=1

Dane

FYI:

This can be ordered dirt cheap at Buyoyo from $4.90 and up.

toddly6666

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toddly6666

Thanks for bringing this film up. I hadn't heard of it. This looks like a much better film than FOUNDING OF A REPUBLIC or THE MESSAGE. I was in the mood for some historical Chinese film to see - I'm just going to blind buy this one!

UPDATE: Just bought it in Chinatown, thanks again Flixtime!

dleedlee

Just be aware of the shipping charges. They charge by tiered shipping units.

TheDoug

I recently purchased the mainland China release of THE CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH put out by www.gdface.com and was also very impressed by its story and fine direction, photography etc. This is the 2-Disc Region 9 edition which comes with 150 minutes of extras on the second disc or behind scenes and festival and soundtrack recordings etc. (I haven't watched all the extras).
This comes in a nice silver-foiled hard cardboard slipcase which goes beyond your usual flimsy cardboard container. (that's the collector in me talking).
Maybe I'll post some pics.

visitor Q

Mind spilling the beans where you acquired this?

I own a few Nanking related films and I'd like to add a decent quality DVD release to this collection.

Thanks

TheDoug

visitor Q I got the aforementioned set here, for a great price:
http://www.yesasia.com/us/city-of-li...0-en/info.html

And here are those pictures I promised:




That last picture is a little fuzzy, but you get the idea...

zombeaner

I'll have to pick this up, I'm fascinated by the Nanking incident, I have several movies and docs about it. I guess this may be my first HK Blu ray.

asianxcore

Thanks for posting those pics TheDoug, the box is pretty cool.

I might have to check this out.

visitor Q

Thanks again, TheDoug. That's an impressive looking DVD release ...as you so otherwise stated.

I'll have to weigh that one out against the upcoming BR deals.

Rypro 525

question, IMDB lists the OAR as 2:35;1 but the yesasia site says that this dvd is 1:77;1? so is it cropped or is there a typo on yesasia

TheDoug

I'd say that's a typo, it configures to a 2:35;1 ratio.

Dr Mabuse

I'm watching the Blu now, it's a great transfer.

I'm so glad I saw this thread as I did not know about the film before.

I'm loving this movie.

toddly6666

It's an okay film. It's a tear-jerker, but it's not written well enough. It's just a bunch of well-filmed scenes stringed together. Character development wasn't good enough when they had the most interesting characters and some side stories to work with. Every side story had so much potential to get deeper, but it just stayed on the surface. I think it would have been a better film if they focused more on Mr Tang and his women. Mr Tang was played by Wei Fan who should get some Best Actor's award in China (not sure if he did or not).

This should have been Schindler's List. Instead, it was Schindler's List Lite.

FLIXTIME, the drum scene was pretty interesting and probably the most memorable moment from this film, but I thought it was just as interesting as the song&dance scene at the end of Zatoichi as well.

Anyone want to buy my DVD for $13 bucks?

flixtime

toddly, you raise a valid point in that the movie can be said to be episodic in nature. At first it threw me a bit, like in the beginning when you are with the Japanese outside the city, and then you jump into the city with people trying to escape, and then you jump to the small battle after the Japanese have already entered the city. I too maybe thought we'd see an action scene at the city walls or something like that. But since the episodic nature was established from the get-go, I was able to adjust early on so that it didn't bother me for the remainder of the movie. Also too, I sort of was able to rationalize it away in that the episodic nature fit in creating an atmosphere of chaos and unease...which is one of the things I liked in that it really felt to me as if you were there. As you mention, I too would have been receptive to another approach to the story where things were expanded upon a little deeper, whether that would have been by extending the runtime by another thirty minutes or maybe giving it the RED CLIFF treatment by making it two movies...one that focused on the securing of the city and the second on the aftermath. As the film stands, I think they did a nice job in giving it a rather broad scope to try and let you at least glance things from different perspectives. I'm not sure it would have worked as well for me if they had gone the DIARY OF ANNE FRANK route and focused even more on Mr. Tang and his family.

One nitpick I might have is that maybe the director could have shaved a bit - we're talking twenty seconds - off parts of the very end sequence.


Rypro, sorry for the delay, though it now looks like you are leaing towards the 2-disc mainland DVD release, the subs on the HK release were fine enough...like the usual HK release nowadays...there was maybe a spelling error or two such as "please" instead of "pleas" if I remember right...but the subs were certainly acceptable.

dleedlee, I'll be sure to pick up COW...just waiting for a HK DVD to be released.


Another movie that might be of interest to some is the 2009 German co-production JOHN RABE. The character of John Rabe does have a role in CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH, so if you want to see more on that topic then the JOHN RABE movie might work too...though it looks far more commercial/mainstream than CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH. There's a HK DVD release, and maybe a German one too (but I'm not sure about the subs on the German release).


And lastly, since we've mentioned the "drum scene", I'll post the youtube clip of the scene...with the caveat that if you plan to watch the movie sometime soon then don't watch the scene as maybe it can be seen as a spoiler, and watching it now might diminish its impact when you watch the movie. Basically, I'm just posting it for some of you who might not be interested in watching the movie, but might be curious about the specific scene. So here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzHIQVuTLC4

toddly6666

I thought that the HK DVD of JOHN RABE doesn't have English subtitles? UPDATE: never mind, that's the Chinese DVD i was thinking of. The Hong Kong dvd has english subtitles.


The drum scene at the end also is more or less the equivalent to the Micky Mouse Club song scene at the end of Full Metal Jacket.

dleedlee

I ordered the DVD-9 mainland edition but Yesasia sent me the fancy DVD-5 (still working on getting corrected) but even the one I received is perfectly fine.
http://www.yesasia.com/us/cow-dvd-9-...0-en/info.html
DVD-5
http://www.yesasia.com/us/cow-dvd-ch...0-en/info.html

Kind of interesting that Fan Wei (CITY) and Huang Bo (COW) are noted for being comedic talents but give excellent dramatic performances in these films.

mrhan

I thought it was an excellent film. Here's a good companion piece if you want to know more about what happened. It was on HBO a couple of years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Nanking-Hugo-A...0941949&sr=8-1

toddly6666

Why this film wasn't as powerful as it should have been:

Dr Mabuse

This was a great film.

I really enjoyed watching this, well maybe 'enjoyed' is not he best word but you know what I mean.

What a great film.