Christian Bale (of Dark Knight fame) plays the starring role in China’s top-grossing film of 2011, also the most expensive Chinese film ever made, Zhang Yimou’s epic The Flowers of War. See Christian Bale talk about it here.

The film is set in 1937, Nanjing, China, during the “Rape of Nanjing“, at the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War. This is a period that is glossed over in American history classes but was a truly terrible time for China, and is the reason why many Chinese citizens still bear a serious grudge against the Japanese (my mother included).

In the film, Christian Bale plays a mortician who pretends to be a priest to protect Chinese Catholic schoolgirls against imminent rape by Japanese soldiers; he also helps shelter a group of Chinese prostitutes, who ultimately decide to sacrifice themselves in place of the schoolgirls when the Japanese army requests their presence. I haven’t personally seen it yet but CSA is hoping to organize a screening of it at Princeton. It looks really good! Check out the American (English) trailer here. Get your Kleenex ready…  Continue reading →