China’s most expensive film, a bloody blockbuster about the Japanese army’s massacre of civilians in Nanjing, will be released in cinemas across the country on Friday as Beijing steps up its efforts to project its “soft power” across the world.
The Flowers of War, a £60m epic, is China’s official entry to the best foreign language film section of the Academy Awards.
The film is partially funded by the state, following increased government investment in the media and culture industries.
But official hopes that it might represent a resurgent Chinese film industry have been dented by early reviews that castigate its poor plot, wooden acting and propagandist message.
The film stars Christian Bale as an American mortician who tries to save Chinese women and children from rape and murder during the rampage by troops who invaded the city of Nanjing on 13 December 1937.
Released just days after the anniversary of the killings, the film – directed by Zhang Yimou – looks set to stir up nationalist passions, both over the country’s historical grievances and its modern cultural ambitions.
There is no more sensitive subject in modern Chinese history than the “Rape of Nanking” – as the massacre become known in the west.
Historians estimate that between 150,000 and 300,000 civilians were slaughtered by Japanese soldiers.
Dramatisations of the killings have been a staple of Chinese films since the black-and-white propaganda epics of the Mao era. But th
