Review: The Flowers of War (2011)
Cast: Christian Bale, Ni Ni, Xinyi Zhang
Director: Zhang Yimou
Country: China | Hong Kong
Genre: Drama | History
Official Trailer: Here
Since bursting onto the scene in 1987 with Red Sorghum, Zhang Yimou has fashioned a formidable filmography marked by stunning visuals, intense colours, and perhaps above all a range of provocative female characters (often interpreted by former muse Gong Li). Zhang’s filmography is also marked by a striking balance between blockbuster historical films and understated narratives that are nevertheless both emotionally sweeping and memorable. Zhang’s previous blockbuster work was arguably the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He followed that feat with two unassuming films: the hugely underrated neo-Western A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop (2009) and the delicate romance Under The Hawthorn Tree (2010). With The Flowers of War, Zhang has put on his blockbuster cap again, opts for forty-percent English dialogue, takes on Christian Bale as the male protagonist, and addresses the still sensitive subject of the 1937 Nanking Massacre perpetrated by the Japanese during the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).
With The Flowers of War, Zhang has put on his blockbuster cap again, opts for forty-percent English dialogue, takes on Christian Bale as the male protagonist…
For anyone who has seen Lu Chuan’s stunning City of Life and Death (2009), which also addresses the Nanking Massacre, The Flowers of War will pale in comparison in terms of emotional, narrative, and dramatic austerity. If City of Life and Death is distant and bleak, in contrast The Flowers of War is personal and hopeful. But let us end the compare-and-contrast here, examine The Flowers of War on its own terms. Within the context of Zhang’s cinema, The Flowers of War is very much in keeping with his cadre of strong female characters, steel-willed and courageous especially in extremely trying circumstances. In this way, The Flowers of War should be considered not based on its ‘successful’ or ‘failed’ depiction of the massacre in all of its complex immensity in absolute terms but rather from the point of view of capturing and considering female experience and expression vis-à-vis the massacre. On these terms, The Flowers of War is for the most part surprisingly poignant. While Zhang’s usual striking visuals literally pop up here and there, on the whole he keeps them to a minimum to deliver a sober/ing story.
What immediately cues the spectator to the film’s privileging of female experience and expression is the female voiceover narration by Catholic student Shujuan Meng (Zhang Xinyi), which makes the film essentially a flashback on how she survived and the people who contributed to her escape from the church in Nanking. Alongside Shujuan’s perspective of things in the film are those of John Miller (Christian Bale), the American mortician who arrives at the church and becomes a faux priest for the sake of keeping up appearances for the Japanese; Yu Mo (Ni Ni), the English-speaking and commanding head of the group of prostitutes who seek asylum in the church; Major Li (Tong Dawei), the last remaining Chinese army soldier in the vicinity who tries to protect the church for as long as he can; and to a lesser extent Mr Meng (Cao Kefan), Shujuan’s father who is the Japanese liaison and helps to secure necessary equipment for the escape. Thus, Shujuan’s narration is not limited to her field of vision; the film is omniscient on this note. At the level of narrative, the film opts for Shujuan’s narration because one, she is a survivor, and two she is the point of contact for all of the main and supporting characters: Major Li shoots the Japanese soldiers who were about to rape her; Yu Mo provokes distaste and disgust at first but then earns her sisterhood; her father sacrifices himself to help John and the girls escape in the truck; John becomes her substitute father figure when Mr. Meng gives her entirely over to his care; and her fellow students follow her lead, such as in their plan to commit suicide instead of being forced to go to the Japanese soldiers.
With the exception of Major Li’s battle against the Japanese soldiers and the rape and murder of two of the prostitutes, little of the action takes place outside of the church premises. The Japanese are ominously present, but not necessarily on-screen. The group dynamics between the women and the girls, and between members of each group, with the men as connecting links and arbiters, are instead the dramatic and narrative focus. The evolution of the cooperation between the women and the girls, moving from animosity and distrust to sisterly admiration and affection is ultimately the story, in the midst of brutal deaths, the Japanese, the war, and the instinct for self-preservation. If you can overlook him being ludicrous at times, the source of humour during the first parts of the film, and ultimately plastic like a cocaine addict who suddenly quits the habit, John is a crucial pivot to this evolution: initially self-centered, the brutality of the Japanese simultaneously hardens and softens him through the act of witnessing.
The evolution of the cooperation between the women and the girls, moving from animosity and distrust to sisterly admiration and affection is ultimately the story, in the midst of brutal deaths, the Japanese, the war, and the instinct for self-preservation.
The ensemble cast that plays the students and the prostitutes, led by Zhang Xinyi and Ni Ni are solid, even if the latter are drawn in an annoying way at times. In truth, each group constitutes a collective composite character rather than individuals, with the above-named exceptions. Gradually, one realises that the strengths, flaws, weaknesses, solidarity, beauty, attitude, and swagger of these girls and women, the titular flowers of war, are the heart of the film, as if in defiance of the war. The operatic quality of the women’s preparations and departure for the Japanese army party heroicises them, mythifies them, all of which is buoyed by Shujuan’s voiceover narration. John’s actual status as a mortician becomes hugely symbolic here: when he makes over the women to look like the girls (to fool the Japanese about the substitution, since the girls had initially been ordered to attend the party), they lie down and he cuts their hair one by one, as if he were preparing the dead for proper burial. The symbolism is subtle, covered in black humour, but delicately powerful, signifying the metaphorical death of these women. As Yu Mo states to John the night before, the bodies of these women will cease to be their own. Their deaths began arguably when they decided to substitute for the girls for the Japanese army party and eventually follow through.
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