Time to begin shooting the war
1/9/2005 16:46
China has lots of stories to tell about the country's long fight
against Japanese aggression which ended in victory 60 years ago, but historians
and film critics are wondering why there are so few great war movies to show how
the struggle was won.
Six decades after China's victory in the War
of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), the country's filmmakers
are finally waking up and calling for the production of a good homegrown war
movie that will have international appeal.
"Little Soldier Zhang Ga," a
1963 film about a teenage guerrilla fighter, remains the star of China's roll
call of war movies as the country begins to screen some wartime films to mark
the 60th anniversary of the Japanese surrender.
The black-and-white film
is regarded as the masterpiece of Chinese war movies but it is largely unknown
in the rest of the world.
Films are not the same as school textbooks.
Good movies, however, can be better than schoolbooks. "Schindler's List," the
1993 Oscar-winning film by Stephen Spielberg, did more to expose the towering
war crimes of the Nazis through telling the story of a German businessman who
rescued more than 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust than 100 books.
Many
Chinese moviegoers ask the question: When can we expect to see a "Schindler's
List" type of movie to illustrate in dramatic terms the nation's wartime plight
and its courageous fight against the Japanese aggressors?
"China is a
gold mine of intriguing and inspiring wartime stories," says Professor Su
Zhiliang, a historian at Shanghai Normal University. "Anyone of them would move
our playwrights and directors to tears."
Over the past 13 years, Su has
been studying the issue of "comfort women"—women who were forced into sexual
slavery for Japanese troops after their invasion of China in the 1930s.
"I can hardly hold back my tears when I hear of those women's bitter,
humiliating experiences," he says.
Su says he once escorted a surviving
"comfort woman" to Osaka, Japan, where the then elderly Chinese woman, surnamed
Yang, told of her sufferings to the Japanese public. "She was raped by Japanese
soldiers in Nanjing when she was only eight and later became a sex slave. She
was injured badly in the rape and had to wear diapers all her life," he recalls.
But to his regret, no one has written a screenplay about the tragedy of
these women.
Earlier this year, the China Association of Literary and
Art Circles brought together a group of veteran playwrights, filmmakers and
critics to discuss how to put China's wartime history on the screen.
"The younger generation of playwrights should exploit China's wartime
resource of stories," says Hu Ke, a veteran playwright now in his 80s.
"We're not making full use of our ample store of evidence about the war
against Fascism and Japanese aggression when compared with other countries,"
says Li Zhun, a noted literary critic. "We are spending lavishly on sitcoms and
detective films. Why don't we give war films more room for development?"
During his stay in China during World War II, the renowned English poet
W.H. Auden described the Holocaust and the Nanjing Massacre as the two most
extreme infamies of the Fascists. Yet people today know much less about the
Nanjing Massacre in 1937-38 than the Nazi concentration camps.
Many
scholars say a major reason for the world's ignorance about the massacre is the
lack of a sufficiently impressive artistic work and the far-reaching influence
it would have.
"The West has turned out a host of other movies similar
to 'Schindler's List'," says Liu Jun, a researcher with the Beijing Film
Academy. "This has, to some extent, led to Germany apologizing for its wartime
crimes."
Japan, on the other hand, has repeatedly enraged its Asian
neighbors who were also its wartime victims by whitewashing Japanese history and
by the frequent visits of its prime ministers to the wartime shrine that honors
14 class-A war criminals responsible for Japanese aggression in China and
Southeast Asian countries.
"It's high time for China to reveal the truth
to the world," says Liu. "In fact, many countries outside Asia, particularly in
the West, have not fully understood that part of our history."
Says
Tadao Sato, a noted Japanese film critic: "If China shoots a 'Schindler's List'
type of wartime movie, I shall recommend that it be shown to Japanese
audiences."
Sato says he was moved by earlier Chinese wartime films,
such as "Along the Songhua River," "The River Flows Eastwards" and "Red
Sorghum," a late-1980s masterpiece by Zhang Yimou.
These human-interest
movies, he says, are very interesting and informative but there are too few of
them.
"The Qixia Temple 1937," a movie designed to be a Chinese version
of "Schindler's List," had its premiere at the Eighth Shanghai International
Film Festival in June. It was the story of an abbot at a temple in Nanjing and
how he and his disciples fought the Japanese and saved the lives of tens of
thousands of refugees during the Nanjing Massacre between December 1937 and
January 1938.
The film was one of a several wartime movies released for
the 60th anniversary of Japan's defeat.
One Shanghai researcher says
China should refer to international award-winning films when making its own war
movies.
"Most Chinese wartime movies highlight the hostilities more than
the humanity," says Chen Qingsheng, a researcher with the Shanghai Academy of
Social Sciences. "Films with a theme of humanity, however, tend to win greater
international recognition."
And war stories can also be conveyed through
musicals or films with a love interest, says Chen.
"China abounds in
wartime stories and first-class directors," says Chen Jiajie, a Fudan University
student and a film fan. "But high-caliber playwrights who are able to write
first-class screenplays still need to be fostered."
In fact, the Nanjing
Massacre has attracted the attention of some elite international filmmakers and
Hollywood stars, including Brendan Fraser.
Fraser indicated at the
recent Shanghai International Film Festival that he would be starring in a film
about a British young man who saved Chinese children from death at the hands of
the Japanese during the Nanjing Massacre.
But he gave no details about
the producer, budget or when the movie would begin shooting.
Xinhua news
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