A new film about one of the most heartrending episodes in recent Chinese history leaves more to be desired.
The Flowers of War is not the first Chinese movie to tackle the painful subject matter of the Nanjing Massacre, and it won't be the last.
For many Chinese writers and artists, the tragedy that took place 74 years ago is the litmus test for their art and consciences.
Coincidentally, Chinese-American writer Ha Jin came out with his rendition of the events in the dark December days of 1937.
Like Ha Jin's novel, Nanjing Requiem, Zhang Yimou's new film is based on a few details in Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin's diary.
Vautrin was an American missionary, who saved the lives of many Chinese women at Ginling Girls College in Nanjing, then spelled "Nanking" and the capital city of China. An entry in her diary mentioned a group of prostitutes took the place of female students in attending a "party" thrown by the occupying Japanese soldiers.
Anyone with a modicum of dramatic sense would see the potential in this fact for a full-blown dramatization.
As a matter of fact, a film of a similar story was made in 1988. Sanctuary was co-directed by none other than Han Sanping, currently the boss of China Film Group and, by extension, the reigning godfather of Chinese cinema.
Zhang Yimou's version, which opens nationwide today, is naturally bigger and more lavish.
It features Oscar winner Christian Bale in the lead. Bale plays an American mortician, whose talent for touching up dead bodies found an unexpected use later in the film.
John Miller is a fictional character, nothing like the Westerners who were heroes in the massacre, also known as the "Rape of Nanking" in the West. He is almost a caricature of typical movie roles assigned to opportunistic Americans - greedy and licentious in a playful way.
Obviously designed for the Western market, the role of an American "jerk", so-called by the church boy who sought his help, is to provide an angle into the chain of events that is accessible for a worldwide audience.
However, that poses a big challenge when Miller turns into a reluctant hero - a maneuver that is bravely handled by Bale with his star power but is still less than convincing.
Likewise, the band of courtesans is treated with broad strokes that leave little room for nuance.
They descend on the Winchester Cathedral in their full florid garb and selfish frivolity - as if they were totally oblivious to the rampages of war engulfing them.
Even Yu Mo, the most intelligent of the bunch, displays a haughtiness that beauty alone would not endow in the circumstances as much as a self-delusion about the harrowing nature of war.
The cast is divided into four major camps: the Chinese soldiers, the Japanese soldiers, the courtesans and the schoolgirls.
Except for one or two "representatives" from each group, the minor characters are rarely given unique portrayals, so they blur into the background like wallflowers. This seems to be consistent with the melodramatic style employed by the filmmaker: Everything is heightened - not for authenticity but for a better yarn.
Although all Chinese troops die in the film, the accuracy and the scale of damage they are able to inflict on the invading Japanese is so amazing that it can only happen in a feel-good adventure flick.
That takes away much of the pathos almost innately built in the story.
One is constantly waiting for a superhero to vanquish all the bad guys and reverse the historical chapter that lingers so achingly in the Chinese national psyche.
Zhang Yimou simply cannot contain his flourish for sprightly colors.
In the scene where the last Chinese soldier dies in an explosion, the store across the street from the cathedral where he has been in hiding happens to be one that sold colored paper.
That provides an excuse for a firecracker-like effect for the final blowup, which looks splendid on screen but reminds me of the Beijing Olympics rather than wartime horrors.
