THE FLOWERS OF WAR (Zhang Yimou). 141 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (February 24). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
The Flowers Of War is what happens when someone tries to a make an upbeat movie about the Rape of Nanking.
Favoured Chinese crowd-pleaser Zhang Yimou (House Of Flying Daggers, Curse Of The Golden Flower) has made a film about the devastating 1937 occupation that, unlike Lu Chuan’s grim, mesmerizing City Of Life And Death, won’t bum people out.
The result, as one might expect, is a film that feels consistently calculated and fraudulent, breaking its own back trying to pull a happy ending out of a brutal historical reality.
Zhang’s story takes place at a church that serves as a refuge for our heroes. Schoolgirls live in its dormitory, and a dozen or so young prostitutes from a nearby brothel arrive seeking sanctuary.
Then Christian Bale turns up as an American mortician who impulsively dons the robes of the chapel’s dead priest in order to fend off the Japanese – and winds up falling into an unlikely romance with the one working girl who speaks English (Ni Ni).
It’s too well produced to write off completely, but it’s not good at all. Even Bale, who’s usually rock solid as a flawed hero, miscalculates the tone and winds up on the broad side of Zhang’s melodramatic sensibility.
On the upside, six months from now no one will remember he’s in this.
