《南京！南京！》将与洛杉矶观众见面了

　　《南京！南京！》的挣扎

　　在中国曾引起巨大争议的陆川作品终将与洛杉矶观众见面了

　　这篇文章在2011年6月14日登于《洛杉矶时报》文化专栏的头版。

　　文：Mark Olsen 《洛杉矶时报》专稿

　　2011年6月14日

　　1937年的南京大屠杀是中国历史上痛苦的一页。30万的平民被杀戮，无数的妇女被强暴，日军令人发指的种种兽行。当导演陆川决定拍摄这个题材时，他已经想好该如何讲述这个故事。

　　“刚开始，我就想拍一个传统风格的电影：一条主线、一个主人公，”陆川在5月26号通过电话接受采访时说道：“我接受的历史教育曾使我坚信这些日军全是禽兽。”

　　但是当他潜心下来阅读当时的书信、日记等资料，并且到日本考察时，他的头脑中开始出现了一个不同的电影。

　　“通过研究，我改主意了，因为我发现这些日本兵也是人。我误解了历史。南京大屠杀不仅存在与中国和日本人的记忆当中，它应该存在与所有人的记忆当中，是全人类的一个教训。所以我决定这部电影不仅是关于南京大屠杀，关于中国和日本人之间的故事，而是能打动所有观众的一部电影。”

　　他努力的结果就是《南京！南京！》。6月17号于洛杉矶的观众见面。这部电影从多个而不是一个角度再现了那段历史。

　　影片一开始就把观众带入了紧张的战争场面：中国士兵、日本士兵、国际救援人员、孩子、混乱中挣扎惶恐的平民。随着情节的发展，人物和故事线索慢慢凸显出来。

　　“这一点对我很重要，因为它让我想到，如果有一天我在战场上，我也会像日本兵那样，所以我的这部电影是想反映一个人如何沦为杀人的机器，或这一个人如何在战争中受煎熬。”陆川在浙江外景地接受采访时说道。

　　鉴于影片敏感的题材、他的多方位叙述角度以及影片中的暴力场面，中国政府经过6个月的考虑才批准了这部电影。

　　2009年4月影片在中国放映时，票房斐然。但影片也引来巨大的争议、甚至是愤怒。陆川本人甚至受到死亡威胁。

　　“坦白地讲，我没想到影片会如此有争议。但我认为我做的是对的。我很震惊当这部影片竟然使我招惹‘杀身之祸’”，陆川谈道。

　　这部影片的北美上映之路也一波三折，而且参杂了颇多政治因素。2009年在多伦多国际电影节放映，并斩得圣塞巴斯蒂安电影节最佳影片奖之后，影片原定即将与北美观众见面。但影片从2010年的棕榈泉电影节的角逐中退出，因为同时参赛的还有一部关于达赖喇嘛的记录片。商业发行随之泡汤。

　　发行公司的副总裁Gary Palmucci谈到：“我希望所有的尘封往事都过去。如何把这一部影片介绍给美国观众才是我现在关注的重点。”

　　《南京！南京！》的拍摄过程也充满了传奇色彩。1个亿的投资额、6个月搭建外景、253天的拍摄期，9个月的后期制作、3万名群众演员、一场戏多大2千名演员以及将彩色胶片冲淡到黑白色的处理方法。

　　美国南加州大学东亚研究中心的主任Stanley Rosen说道：“我对于影片的结尾感到有些意外。”Stanley Rosen也是《中国电影中的艺术、政治及商业》一书的编者。“在中国，电影审查的一个重要因素是电影的结尾。田壮壮的《蓝风筝》因为结尾过于暗淡而被禁播，田壮壮也被禁10年。张艺谋的《活着》因为结局表现出希望而获得通过。《南京！南京！》也有这个特点。所以在中国，获得审批，电影的结局很重要，要正面、积极。”

　　影片的故事基于史实，但许多人物是虚构出来的。陆川力求影片的真实感，他还是包含了日军祭祀这一半仪式、半游行、半舞蹈的场景。这一场景需要1000名群众演员。

　　这一场景在视觉上展示了这一场战争的相对胜利者精神的极度疲惫、道德的困惑及情绪上的激动与兴奋。这一场景曾在陆川的梦中出现过。

　　“这个场景也是我拍摄这部电影的动力。在拍摄前，我在电脑前坐了一天，仔细打磨剧本。睡觉后我就梦到了这个场景，一群日本兵在城市的废墟上跳舞，简单但极具冲击力的舞蹈。我醒来后，决定把这个场景放到电影中。”

　　陆川谈到北美的放映再次激发了国内观众对于这部电影的关注。他的粉丝在博客中写道在重新看或开始看这部电影。

　　Palmucci认为这部电影类似于吴宇森1989年的《喋血双雄》。《喋血双雄》在美国起初票房并不理想，但现在被称为经典大片。

　　https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-city-of-life-and-death-20110614,0,2159266.story

　　Struggles of 'City of Life and Death'

　　Lu Chuan's film about the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanjing, which touched off controversy in China, finally comes to Los Angeles.

　　A scene from "City of Life and Death." (Image.net / June 14, 2011)

　　By Mark Olsen, Special to the Los Angeles Times

　　June 14, 2011

　　Among the most painful chapters in modern Chinese history is Japan's 1937 invasion of Nanjing. Hundreds of thousands were killed, countless women were raped, and soldiers and civilians alike suffered unspeakable brutalities. So when Chinese writer-director Lu Chuan set out to make a movie about the siege of the city, he had a notion of how the story would go.

　　"In the beginning I was just going to make a traditional movie, with a single plot and one hero," said Lu. "I received a historical education in China, so at first I believed all these Japanese soldiers were beasts."

　　Yet once he immersed himself in research, reading letters and diaries from the period and even traveling to Japan, a different film began to emerge in his imagination.

　　"Doing the research, step by step I would change my mind.… I changed my mind because the Japanese soldiers were also human beings," he said. "I found I had misunderstood the history. The Nanjing massacre is not only in the memory of Chinese people and Japanese people, it should be in the memory and lessons of all human beings. So I wanted to make a movie not only about the Nanjing massacre, a story between Chinese and Japanese, I wanted to make a movie which can touch the heart of any audience."

　　The result was "City of Life and Death," which opens in Los Angeles on Friday and brings the events to disturbingly vivid life not from one perspective, but from many.

　　The film plunges the viewer immediately into the action, giving consideration to Chinese soldiers and civilians, Japanese soldiers and their officers, international aid workers, women, children and others swept up in the violent chaos of the invasion. Characters and story lines slowly emerge from the swirl of events.

　　"It's a very important point, for me, that makes me think, I am myself a human being. Someday if I were on the battlefield, I might do something similar to those Japanese soldiers," said Lu, 40, speaking in English from the set of his next film in Zhejiang province in eastern China. "So I wanted to make a movie to show how a common person becomes a killer, or how a person suffers in battle."

　　Due to the sensitive nature of the material, Lu's insistence on a sense of multiple points of view and the film's jarring brutality, it took some six months for the film to be approved by Chinese government censors, and faced another delay after that.

　　When "City of Life and Death" was finally released in China in April 2009, it was an immediate hit, taking in more than $25 million. But the film also touched off anger and Lu himself received death threats.

　　"To be honest with you I didn't expect that I was making a controversial movie," said Lu. "I think I felt I was doing something right. I couldn't imagine it as a controversial movie. And I was totally shocked that when the movie was released in China it aroused so much hatred against me."

　　There were more politics involved in getting the film into U.S. theaters: It screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in fall 2009 and won best picture at the 2009 San Sebastian Film Festival. Soon thereafter, it was to be released in the United States. But then the film was suddenly pulled from the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival because Chinese officials were upset the festival was also showing a documentary on the Dalai Lama, a movie China objected to. Plans for a commercial booking of "City of Life and Death" in New York City also fell apart.

　　"I'm hoping all this stuff's going to go away essentially when the movie opens," said Gary Palmucci, vice president of distribution at Kino Lorber Inc., which is releasing "City of Life and Death" in the U.S. "I'm worried about other things connected to the film. The back story from two years ago is of less concern to me. It's a tough film to get into the marketplace and that's been my main focus.”

　　The making of "City" — which reportedly cost between $12 million and $13 million, a substantial budget for a Chinese film — would become something of an epic adventure unto itself. Six months were spent constructing the outdoor set so that Lu and cinematographer Cao Yu — working with color film desaturated to rich black and white in post-production — could shoot with total freedom in and around their mock-up of the city. Some 30,000 extras would cycle through the production over the course of a 253-day shoot, with upward of 2,000 extras in a single scene. Post-production took nine months.

　　"I was surprised as much ended up on the screen as actually did," said Stanley Rosen, director of the East Asian Studies Center at USC and co-editor of the book "Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema."

　　"One of the key things about censoring of films in China is how does the film end," added Rosen. "A film like 'The Blue Kite,' which has been banned and the director Tian Zhuangzhuang was banned from filmmaking for about 10 years, that film ends completely, unremittingly bleak. Whereas a movie like Zhang Yimou's 'To Live' ends with hope. And 'City of Life and Death' ends with hope. That's a key to getting censorship approval in China, what is the end of the film and does it show something positive or not."

　　The stories in the film are based in fact, though many of Lu's characters are composites. Though Lu wanted the film to feel real, he also included a sequence of the conquering Japanese in the streets that is part ceremony, part parade, part dance number. (It required choreography for more than 1,000 extras.)

　　The sequence in part makes physical the emotional exhaustion, moral confusion and ecstatic tumult felt by even the conflict's relative victors. Perhaps appropriately, it came to Lu in a dream.

　　"That was the motivation that pushed me to finish the film," Lu said of the sequence. "Before I shot the movie, I had spent a long day in front of my computer polishing the script and I went to bed and I had this dream of Japanese soldiers dancing. Very simple but very shocking, dancing in the ruins of the city. I woke up and felt I should put it in the movie."

　　With the long journey to simply get "City of Life and Death" into American theaters finally reaching its end, the film is dividing critics here just as it did in China. The New Yorker's Richard Brody decried it as a "vulgarization" of the events in Nanjing, while Manohla Dargis in the New York Times hailed Lu as an "extraordinary visual artist."

　　Lu noted that the U.S. rollout has renewed interest in the film in China, with many of his Twitter followers and blog commenters mentioning they are watching the movie again or even for the first time.

　　Palmucci likened the film to something like John Woo's 1989 feature "The Killer," which is now revered as a classic but initially struggled to find an audience.

　　"These movies are never going to have an easy time because they fall somewhere in between," Palmucci said. "They have commercial elements but the chances of attracting commercial audiences are usually slim. And the violence makes them a little tough for the older audiences that primarily gravitate to the art house circuit. A ['Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'] is really the exception that proves the rule."