The Flowers of War - a Movie Review

I have found one of the most moving and amazing movies I have seen in a very long time and I feel the need to tell everyone about it. I have never felt the urge to do a movie review before, because really I think most of you would just think I’m nuts for the movies I love but because I feel so strongly about this movie I figured I should say something. The Flowers of War may not be for everyone but I have fallen in love with it. It is a movie called based on a novel called “13 Flowers of Nanjing” by Geling Yan, which I purchased just yesterday and am looking forward to reading. (I will be reviewing the book on Boxes of Paper in a few weeks so stay tuned for that).

The movie takes place in Nanjing, China in 1937 during a massacre that happened during the Second Sino-Japanese War. For more information on the massacre check out Nanking Massacre on wikipedia. I will admit that even though I have studied a little Chinese and Japanese history I did not know of this event, or if I did I had filed it away behind all my world war history and forgotten about it which is a shame. I have added the event and time period to the list of history I need to learn more about though. So I will be doing a little research before long.

The movie tells the story of a Western mortician who ends up at a church that is full of young convent girls, one young boy but no adults at the start of the Nanjing Massacre. A group of prostitutes shows up seeking refuge from the massacre that is going on in the city at the church and although the young boy turns them away at first they jump the fence and force their way in. The movie continues to tell the story of these young convent girls and although they are in a great deal of risk from the invading Japanese we get to see how many people are willing to sacrifice themselves for the young girls to protect them against the invading soldiers. Everyone is just trying to protect and save their innocence from the cruelty that faces them in city that is being destroyed by an unspeakable enemy.

Although I am predisposed to noticing war type movies I will admit this one wasn’t even on my radar. I didn’t even know it existed. It was my random boy craziness and that led me to it one day when I was bored and searching on imdb.com. Anyone that knows me will know and appreciate that although I love too many movie stars to list, there are only a couple of stars that I really adore and that show up very predominately in my movie collection. One of those stars is Christian Bale. I have adored him since I first saw him in Newsies. (I will even admit quietly that for years when I wrote in my journal it was his name that was at the top of the page). Since then I have seen and bought a large majority of his movies and so when I came across this movie I picked it up without a second thought. Of course since I bought it while I was in the middle of my Camp Nanowrimo writing challenge it sat on my shelf until last week.

When I put it in the dvd player I didn’t really know what to expect and as usual when I watch anything I had my laptop out planning on doing some work with my photos while I watched. It only took a few minutes of the movie before I was closing the laptop having my attention completely drawn into the movie. The movie was impressive enough that I even forgot that I was watching Christian Bale (which for me is a bigish deal because I will admit I do have a tendency to watch movies so that I can day dream about whichever cute star is in it).

The movie was incredibly moving. There were moments where I wanted to scream at the tv and moments where I was left sobbing. There are some scenes that were very hard to watch but if you can get through them it is a very moving story. I like it for the same reason I tend to like holocaust stories, which is that although you get to see the absolute worst in people you also get to see the absolute best in people as well. Movies like this really make me think and wonder what I would do if I was in the situation. I like to think I would be selfless enough to do the right thing but I guess we can never really know for sure and hopefully I will never actually have to find out what I would do in such a situation.

I guess long story short if you are looking for a really good movie to watch and you are open to a few tears (or lots if you are like me and cry at everything) go out and pick up this movie. I will warn you that the images of the movie may stick with you but I think that is the point of a good movie. So although I may be biased because of Bale or the fact it is a history movie I still think it is worth a watch.