Revised Top Ten Films List

1. Cloud Atlas 

2. City of Life and Death 

3. Schindler's List 

4. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

5. Psycho 

6. Casablanca 

7. Chinatown 

8. Rebel Without a Cause 

9. Stand By Me 

10. Gomorrah 

City of Life and Death

City of Life and Death is truly a spectacular film. Watching it is an experience you won't soon forget, however, it is by far an enjoyable experience. There are so many degrading and horrifying images throughout the film, and at first it's completely shocking. After a while, though, the viewer becomes slightly numb to the images--it really becomes an overload. The most enjoyable experience in the entire movie (and that's saying something since it isn't an enjoyable movie at all) is the character development. The different characters and their stories are really what make this movie so impactful. It makes the traumatic experiences shown on screen that much more personal. From Ms. Jiang (Yuanyuan Gao) and her mission to save those around her to Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi) and his coming of age as a Japanese Soldier during the invasion of the Chinese Capitol Nanjing and the horrors enacted there. 

When I say this wasn't an enjoyable experience, I don't mean to say that it was a bad movie. Far from it. The cinematography, acting, and screenplay were all outstanding. It was too outstanding really, because it is truly heartbreaking and horrifying. It's possibly the scariest movie I've ever seen. That being said, what really made the movie outstanding were three things: The use of color/noise, the acting, and the use of the camera. 

The movie is shot in black and white, much like the 1993 Steven Spielberg Film, Schindler's List (which also happened to be set in World War II and also depicted horrifying images), and this makes the images much more effective. The audience isn't distracted by all the color in the scene and is forced to focus on what is actually happening around them. That, along with the camera movement, really puts the audience in the middle of the scenes as if they are experiencing it along with the characters. The sound also has a hand in doing this. Each and every sound (from the bombs and the crumbling buildings to the creaking of beds and the collective sighs, moans, and screams of women being raped) is crystal clear. The sound of the scene around you is emphasized more than the sounds of characters speaking. 

As I said before, the most enjoyable part of the movie was the character development. The most fascinating character, to me, was Kadokawa. He's a young soldier, most likely barely of age, still a virgin, at the beginning of the movie. He hasn't even begun to experience life and is thrown into the middle of this brutality while fighting for his country. His character really shows that even though someone may be fighting on the "wrong side" of history, that doesn't necessarily mean they are to blame. He looks around him and is just as helpless, trapped, and oppressed as the people who are being slaughtered and raped. Throughout his journey in the movie, he meets a Japanese Prostitute and falls in love with her. He finds some human connection with her during their interaction, and longs for that kind of connection amongst the evil he sees around him. He naively believes that she loves him too and is disappointed when he realizes that she views him like any other soldier out there who uses her for her services. Later in the movie, he meets another woman in a camp the soldiers have reserved for the women they are raping. He is completely disgusted with the degradation going on around him (and at this point the audience can hear the clear distinction of sound around the scene: The creaking of the beds, the moans of the suffering women, the grunts of the soldiers, etc). Behind Kadokawa, you can see the shadow of a man raping a woman and you can see the sheets separating each bed moving. It's one of the most horrifying scenes I've ever seen in a movie (and I almost contemplated leaving the auditorium while watching it). He sits in a chair beside the woman's bed who stares unseeingly up at the ceiling. Another soldier walks by and asked if Kadokawa is finished. Kadokawa replies yes, and the soldier proceeds to climb on top of the bed and rape the woman. She then turns her eyes to Kadokawa as if to say "you are all the same. It's just the system. You didn't rape me, but you allow him to. Neither of us can escape the life we live. We will both die trapped." Kadokawa then turns his back and leaves. A while later, we see the dead woman's naked body carried off along with other women while Kadokawa looks on. The interaction between Kadokawa and the woman was less than three seconds long and yet, I feel, it summed up the entire feel of the movie. In fact, it was foreshadowing. It not only foreshadowed the woman's death, but the end of the movie as well. At the end, Kadokawa releases two prisoners: a young boy and an older man. He then says "it's easier to die than it is to live" and kills himself. Had he lived, he would have been forever trapped and haunted by the images he had seen during the war. He chooses the "easier" way and kills himself. 

My favorite part of the movie was the ending (and not just because the horror was over at that point). The last image of the movie is of the young boy, who survived against impossible odds, laughing. His laughter is a sign of hope and humanity that wasn't present in the film. It's a symbol that even through the darkest of times, life and goodness will prevail (as corny as that message is, it's extremely important). 

Overall, I would definitely recommend this movie. It's actually a must-see, in my opinion. However, it isn't a movie for the faint of heart and even for the most jaded of us, you'd have to be in a certain mind set in order to handle the barrage of horrors portrayed in the film. That being said, it's a movie that definitely needs to be seen but with preparation,