BACK TO 1942

China, 2012, 145 minutes, Colour.
Guoli Zhang, Adrien Brody, Tim Robbins.
Directed by Xiaogang Feng.

In recent years, Chinese cinema has been going back to the war with Japan in the 1930s and 1940s. There have been several moving films about the siege of Nanking, especially 2009’s City of Life and Death. The 2012 Chinese film, The Flowers of War, in collaboration with the US, included Christian Bale as part of the story. Such collaborations make the film more accessible for American audiences, by including Adrien Brody as Time Magazine war correspondent Theodore White and Tim Robbins (to far less effective extent, including an unrecognisable accent) as a Catholic priest dispensing pious reflections.

Director Xiogang Feng has made some impressive films including Wedding Banquet (a variation on Hamlet) and the historical film, The Assembly. This time, with a large budget, he recreates the famine in Henan province which sent millions on to the roads as starving refugees, three million of them dying. This is the backdrop to Japanese occupation and the attempts of the Chinese military under the leadership of Chiang- Kai- Chek to defeat Japan.

For audience identification as the film moves from military headquarters to American consulate and Japanese officials, the screenplay focuses on a family and its sufferings. Master Fan is wealthy and has grain as the famine begins to bite. He presides over a family that is wilful and arrogant. Challenged by local bandits, a fight breaks out which leads to everyone taking to the roads.

There are some extremely harrowing scenes, some horrifying deaths and two very powerful and frightening sequences of Japanese planes dropping bombs on the refugees causing callous injuries and deaths. By the end of the film, the audience is quite vividly aware of the toll of starvation on body and spirit.

The film also shows the initial ineffectiveness of the Chinese government, underestimating the famine and hesitating to help – food was necessary to keep the troops alive and fighting, so civilians were deemed expendable. Ultimately Chiang-Kai-Chek? tries to do something but the Japanese have advanced too far.

Adrien Brody has a good role as the war correspondent, sharing the miseries of the road and photographing some of the savagery which he presents to the Generalissimo and ultimately publishes to alert Chinese and American readers. Tim Robbins plays a missionary who welcomes the correspondent but also has to deal with a Chinese fellow priest who has taken a faith stance (a cause rather than faith as he preaches to the refugees) and who becomes disillusioned by the bombings. His questioning of God and non-intervention echoes the desperation of Master Fan as he loses everyone and everything – except finding a little girl by her dead mother. The narrator tells us that she survived to be his mother.

The narration offers moments of questioning as to why these stories should not be left in the past. Watching the film with no appreciable knowledge beforehand of the events reminds us that we must not forget the past but must learn from it.

1. The questions about why the Chinese would want to remember these aspects of history? The writer of the story – and the heritage of his grandmother and her question about remembering the past?

2. The impact of the film for Chinese audiences, their memories, history, the past, war and famines? Japanese occupation? Deaths? The impact for non-Chinese audiences?

3. The scope of the film, recreating the period, the use of special effects, the stunt work for the war sequences, the experience of famine and war?

4. The Japanese occupation, the 1930s and extending into World War Two? The Japanese soldiers, the treatment of the Chinese, the bombing and strafing, the food issues, using Chinese? The traditional enmity?

5. The focus on the village, the description, the visuals of the land, the drought? Fan and his leadership? His son and his seduction, the pregnant wife, Fan’s daughter, the schooling and her wanting to go back to school? The driver, the workers on the property, the focus for the film?

6. The arrival of the bandits, the threats, the deals with Fan, the sharing of the food, his sending for soldiers, the return of the messenger, the fighting?

7. The refugees on the road, the indication of days, the indication of miles? The vistas of people on the roads, the groups joining into one? Issues of food, absence of food, illness? The people dying? Deals for food? Fan and his preserving food for his family? The monk, his Catholicism, his exhortations to faith and endurance?

8. Chiang Kai-shek, his leadership, the role of his wife, his strategies, his advisers, going to Burma, his estimation of the Chinese situation, not acknowledging the deaths in famine, his belief in Chinese goodness? His history during the war – and subsequently?

9. Theodore White, correspondent for Time magazine, his discussions with people, the close-ups and photos, his articles, his accompanying the group, witnessing the atrocities, the dogs and the corpses, his sleeping and being robbed, the empathy with the people, his allowing his assailants to go? Getting back his camera? His being helped by the army? His interview with authorities, going to see Chiang Kai-shek? The authorities ignoring him, including the Americans?

10. The Chinese army, the dilemma of food for the troops or food for ordinary people? The military decisions?

11. The monk, his being wounded in the strafing, going back to his monastery, Bishop Meekin, his piety? The monk and his faith doubts (and the paralleling with Fan’s final questions about asking why he had to suffer)? The interview with Theodore White, urging him on?

12. The visuals of the bombings, the strafing, the effect on people, the attendant to Fan and his mother, her death? The other worker and his being captured? His being invited to cook? The sword in his mouth and his death?

13. The travelling court, the authority, the arrest of the authorities?

14. The pregnancy, the birth sequence and its pathos?

15. Fan, his moving through the countryside, his smothering the child accidentally? Meeting the girl, taking her as his granddaughter – and the voice-over explaining the origins of this novel and the film version?