Flower of War

Flower of War

Flower Of War is a film by Zhang Yimou released on 16th December 2011. The film stars Christian Bale playing as John Miller, an English actor. The film is based on a novel written by Geiling Yan, a Chinese-American author. The film is set in Nanjing during the Japanese invasion that led to the massacre of innocent civilians between 1937 and March 1938. The story is told from Miller’s perspective and how he ends up saving the lives of the convent schoolgirls through sacrifice.

The story of the Nanjing massacre in Flower Of War is told through the eyes of an American drunk mortician John Miller. The mortician finds himself in Nanjing at the time of the massacre when he came to bury a catholic priest and misses out on a chance to escape the city and ends up trapped in the cathedral. The cathedral happens to be a neutral background in the war-torn city. In the cathedral, there happen to be 25 young Chinese women who are hiding from the Japanese army. The women are a mix of young convent schoolgirls and prostitutes. As the film starts, Miller is a drunken mess but can pull himself together in what started as a drunken joke to impress Yu Mo played by Ni Ni a prostitute.

Miller sobers up and decides to pretend to be a priest and dresses in the dead priest’s vestments and takes up the responsibility of protecting the women and ensuring they get away safely. There is a young catechist in the church, George, who assists Miller. The cathedral is surrounded by Japanese troops who have the order to shoot any civilians on sight. Those inside the cathedral are safe, but stepping outside the church walls means death. Miller’s quick thinking and the kind educated Japanese officer that loves music keeps the girls alive. The troops outside the cathedral are aware of the schoolgirls inside the church and not the prostitutes. The Japanese officer invites the girls to sing at his party; they all know that this would lead to their rape and murder and devise a plan. The prostitutes volunteer to switch their clothes with the schoolgirls and take their places. The prostitutes go to the party and are never heard of or seen again and “father John ” is left with the task of saving the students.

PR A

The major theme that is evident in the film is redemption. The headliner, Miller is helpless and self-serving and ends caught up in a war-torn Nanjing. At first, he only seems to care about himself but something awakes in him while he plays a drunken joke by wearing the dead priest’s vestment. Although wearing the priest’s attire was a joke to impress Mo, a prostitute hiding in the cathedral, he silently reasons to himself as to why he is wearing these clothes and what it means to be in them. This makes him change his character and decides to play the part of any good serving priest to protect and save the young women. He redeems himself to a hero in the eyes of the young women.

The prostitutes in the cathedral also get a chance to redeem themselves from the self-serving image people have of them. The time in the cathedral and their interaction with those in the cathedral at the time made them realize the kind of life they lived was not fit. Their transformation is seen when they sacrifice themselves and take the place of the young girls clearly understanding that this sacrifice might lead to their deaths. The saw that the young, innocent schoolgirls deserved a chance to live and do things right, and the only way they could be remembered in good light is if they volunteered their lives to save the schoolgirls.

CT for PR A

Zhang used close up shots to bring about intensity and emotions in the film. This technique was most crucial during the self-realization moments that changed the expected outcomes of the first impressions of the characters as seen by the audience. The close up of Miller rubbing his hand over the dead priest’s vestment brings in the audience to the deep thought and questions that are going through the actor’s mind before bringing them to the Miller with a changed personality. The close-up shots are offered as explanations before an expected change in the character.

CT B

The aerial shot of the Japanese troops invading the city by trucks is used to show the audience of the intensity of the war. Besides the Japanese trucks, the audience can see the dilapidated state of the city with destroyed and half burnt buildings. The aerial shot has been used in several invading scenes as a way of showing the audience the gravity of the situation at hand. As at most times, the invading troops over the number the people in the places they invade; therefore, surviving the invasion is perceived as a miracle.

PR B

Another theme that is evident in the film is the thin line between innocence and experience. The people hiding in the cathedral offered contrasts between innocence and experience. Miller was not innocent as he was a drunk, and his attempt to seduce the leader of the prostitutes for love and passion shows this. On the other hand, the catechist that ended up assisting him in his plans was an innocent young man with a total contrast of Miller. The prostitutes and the schoolgirls in the cathedral is also a representation of the contrast between innocence and experience. At the time of the war, women all over the city were facing rape before being murdered, something that those in the church did not face until the prostitutes volunteered to take the place of the schoolgirls at the party. In this aspect, the schoolgirls were symbolic of sexual innocence as they were virgins, on the other hand, the prostitutes had sexual experience and had seen the good and the ugly side of it in their working careers. This experience might be the reason for them to volunteer themselves in place of the schoolgirls as they saw it was not right for them to experience such cruelty while they were still innocent.

CT for PR B

Cast choice is intentional and carefully selected to fit the roles played by each actor. The drunken Miller is juxtaposed next to the young, innocent catechist that has been raised by the dead priest since the death of his parents. The two work side by side to ensure the safety of those in the church. The schoolgirls are dressed in the school uniforms and look as simple and meek as they can as opposed to the bright appearance of the prostitutes with flowered clothes and made-up faces.

CT B

Here the up-close shots of the characters’ faces have been used to show the contrasting aspects of innocence as opposed to experience. When the schoolgirls peek to watch the party the prostitutes are having, the cameraman uses the up-close shots to read the emotions. The schoolgirl’s facial expression shows disgust, and she even states that the ladies do not act as modest as they had pretended to be. The up-close shots of the prostitutes in the party remove all innocence in them as they drink and smoke as well as the seductive looks on their faces do away with any form of innocence in them.

OR A

The choice of using a western as the headliner in a Chinese film in a war-torn setting is seen by many as a ploy to place the west in good light among a Chinese state that is known to have a tension-filled relationship with the west. The hero of the film starts as being depicted in bad light a selfish drunkard who then redeems himself and becomes a savior among the people within the cathedral. This changes at the end of the film where the true heroes are the Chinese Prostitutes that give up their lives to save the schoolgirls and the Chinese major that stays after everyone has left to fight off the invading Japanese troops.

CT for OR A

The choice of words in the scene where Miller discovers the prostitutes drinking the wine in the cellar shows how the westerner is depicted among the Chinese. George and the schoolgirls have a certain perception of the westerner just as the prostitutes have their own opinion of the westerner, Miller. George knew that Miller was a drunk, and his statement that has now discovered the wine shows mistrust and tells him they sell the wine to get money to support them. The conversational choice in this scene is used to explain the Chinese perception of westerners. 

CT B

A long shot that moves into a close-up shot of the schoolgirl sited behind candles is a scene that shows the audience of the true heroes of the film. The long-shot is symbolic of the perception of the prostitutes at the start in the eyes of the innocent as the camera moves in closer, the audience is able t see the young girl smiling with the candles out of focus in the back as a memory for the prostitutes and the smile on her face shows her changed the perception of them from shameless people to heroes.

OR B

The film is seen by many as a film that does not tell the story of the rape and murder in its truest form. This is not the reality of the film but shows the Nanjing massacre in the same aspect of rape and murder but from a protective perceptive of protecting innocent children. Among the people hiding in the cathedral, the schoolgirls were innocent children, and the people in the church, despite their lucid characters, understood that the lives and innocence of the schoolgirls were of key priority and went to greater extents to protect them. The extent of protecting these innocent lives from rape and murder is seen by the drunk changing his ways and the prostitutes’ sacrifice to offer themselves just to protect the innocent schoolgirls.

CT for OR B 

The camera angles that the director chooses to use when the schoolgirls were escaping is an attempt to bring in the audience to the desperation of the children to escape and the Chinese army’s attempt to protect them. When the Japanese soldier attempts to grab a young girl the girl throws her bag into the air and an aerial shot of it is shown followed by a close-up shot of a bullet going through the bag then the Japanese soldier. These battlefield angle shots are there to show the long and extreme choices that the able people are taking to protect the children.

CT B

A long shot scene of the prostitutes singing with the stained glass in the background is an interesting way the director has used to show a metaphoric tale of protection. The brightly lit stain glass at the back is a ray of hope for the children, which came from the most unexpected place, the prostitutes singing in front of it. This scene has been used to show a clear picture in the mind of a schoolgirl of how she was saved by people she did not expect and had earlier perceived as selfish and shameless.

Article summary

The article Contested Images of Rape: The Nanjing Massacre in Chinese and Japanese Films by Weiss, looks into the Nanjing massacre and how it has been presented in the media over the years. The article puts focus on rape and murder. The author states that most of the films produced in China and Hong Kong are produced in the perceptive of how western witnesses experienced the war mostly in the Nanking safety zone. She points out the fact that the Japanese mainstream media has remained silent on the sexual violence that was meted out on civilians in the Nanking war. She highlights the presentation of rape war films as uncomfortable situations, and in most cases, they are depicted as conversations between males and not the females discussing their pain. The author looks into the relation between war and rape and how nations perceive these two things. She states that some use rape as a tool of fear and subjugation during the war. She addresses the use of the Japanese term ‘comfort women’ in addressing their victims. The depiction of rape in Chinese films retelling the war was highly avoided and most focused on the reconciliation of families and the number of dead victims. In 1987, the first Chinese film addressing the issue of rape in the Nanking war was produced.

Works cited

Weiss, Amanda. “Contested Images of Rape: the Nanjing Massacre in Chinese and Japanese Films.” Signs. 41.2 (2016): 433-456. Print.