The Flowers of War

The Flowers of War (2011)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1410063/

Yimou Zhang's war drama The Flowers of War tells us the story of an American man, John Miller (Christian Bale), living as a mortician in China.  He's been paid to give a burial of a priest at a convent in Nanking during the Japanese occupation in World War II.  He arrives to find that the Chinese have already occupied the city and everyone but the convent girls and a priest's assistant have fled, but the former occupants of a brothel are also seeking refuge at the church.  While there, he begins to take responsibility for all the girls, and tries to save them all from the brutalities of the Japanese army.





Some gut-wrenching stuff in this film. Stuff you'd never want to experience, and it really makes you happy you're not living in the middle of a war. The film is pretty gruesome, and Zhang uses the visual flair he's so well known for to make a fanfare out of bloodshed. You might know Zhang from his former epic, Hero, with Jet Li. After Hero, I think he was trying to follow suit with House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, both of which lacked the soul (and frankly, entertainment value) of the former, so I'm glad he strayed a bit from flying Kung Fu masters.

I was worried, since this was a Chinese production, that Bale might have just been phoning it in for the paycheck, assuming not a large American audience would see it.  But I'm happy to report, he turned in a satisfying performance as the selfish-American-turned-honorable-father-figure. The girls were all great in their roles of students and prostitutes (different girls...not simultaneously), and it was interesting to see the dynamic between the two groups change throughout the film. The film was definitely focused on Bale, but I enjoyed his supporting cast, especially Xinyi Zhang, who played Shu - the leader and big sister type of the students.

It's a flawed, but well-meaning film. It took a while to get going and dragged along in a few places. It's very Asian in style, and it sort of plays like a Chinese soap opera. I still have no idea why Miller was in China in the first place, why he would go into occupied Nanking for a burial job, and it hints at only a small few elements of his or anyone else's back story. I would say, if you're looking for Saving Private Ryan, you're going to be disappointed. China's version of a Holocaust film that plays too much with visual style for the genre, it's still worth a watch if you can handle it, but the impatient and the squeamish might not fare so well.

Score: 6.5/10
Recommended: Yes, but not for everyone.