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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