City of Life and Death (南京！南京！)

City of Life and Death (南京！南京！, Nanjing! Nanjing!) is a 2009 Chinese historical war drama directed and written by Lu Chuan, depicting the Japanese capture of Nanjing in December 1937 and the massacre that followed, told through the intersecting fates of Chinese soldiers and civilians, a conflicted Japanese soldier, and the foreign residents of the city's Safety Zone.^{1 • 2} Shot in black and white entirely with hand-held cameras, it opened in mainland China on April 22, 2009 and in Hong Kong on May 7 as a $12 million Hong Kong-China co-production.³

Production

Lu Chuan began the project after an American investor who had seen Kekexili offered in early 2005 to fund an Asian "Schindler's List" about John Rabe saving Chinese people, on the condition that the script come from the American side. After reading extensive historical material, Lu decided to make his own film about Nanjing instead.¹⁰ The film was formally submitted for approval in September 2006, and preparation through shooting took about three years.^{10 • 11}

Financing was difficult. Lu later told Screen Daily that in China young directors must raise money themselves; he spent nights drinking strong baijiu with potential investors in karaoke bars, sometimes attending three parties in one night. The drinking gave him an ulcer, and he developed appendicitis during production.¹² The production twice ran out of money and the crew disbanded for 45 days; Lu stayed in Tianjin over the Chinese New Year, and actor Gao Yuanyuan developed depression during the shoot.¹¹

Sets were large-scale reconstructions. A Nanjing city gate was built on land lent by the Changchun City government,¹² and street fighting and looting scenes were shot at a disused chemical plant in Tianjin's Beiceng district, where the crew built ruined buildings and shop signs.¹⁰ Post-production was detailed enough that, in Lu's words, even the cracks in the Nanjing city wall were digitally treated by a Hong Kong effects company, and the wool content of the Japanese army uniforms was historically verified.¹³

Style

The film is shot in black-and-white widescreen by cinematographer Cao Yu, who had worked with Lu on Kekexili. Critics repeatedly described the imagery as both beautiful and disturbing: Time Out called it some of "the most luscious black-and-white imagery we've seen in ages," while The Independent noted a newsreel-like quality in places and minimal dialogue.^{8 • 9} Cao Yu explained that black and white abstracts the environment and produces a sense of detachment, letting viewers watch history from a distance before being struck by it; the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun worried that the documentary-style monochrome gave audiences the impression that everything shown was literally true.¹⁴ SBS's review judged that the film "neither shies from nor indulges in gory contemplations of war's excesses," showing beheadings, rape, and the organized "comfort women" system with restraint.¹⁵

Reception and controversy

Critical reception abroad was strongly positive. Rotten Tomatoes recorded 92% positive reviews from 53 critics, and Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 85 based on 13 reviews, with 12 positive and one mixed; the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and San Francisco Chronicle each gave scores of 100.^{4 • 16} At San Sebastián in 2009 the film won the Golden Seashell for best picture and the award for best cinematography, and it took directing and cinematography prizes at both the 2009 Asia Pacific Screen Awards and the 2010 Asian Film Awards.⁶

The Japanese perspective divided Chinese audiences. At a 2009 symposium at Shanghai University, professors including Shi Chuan, Chen Xihe, and Ge Hongbing argued that the film's multi-perspective narrative broke with the traditional narrative mode of Chinese anti-Japanese-war films but also created a viewing dilemma, and that the missing "anti-fascist" dimension was the main source of the gap between creation and reception. Lu Chuan responded that reading the film as showing "Japanese repentance" was a misinterpretation.¹⁷ Time Out observed that accommodating the perspective of a tormented Japanese soldier was a sensitive choice given the horror the episode still carries in Chinese memory.⁸ Later scholarship placed the film within the broader line of Nanjing massacre films, noting that it attempted to reflect on war from a Japanese soldier's angle and to portray the complexity of human nature, in contrast to films centered on foreign witnesses such as John Rabe (2009) or on American perspectives such as The Flowers of War (2011).¹⁸

References

1. City of Life and Death (2009), IMDb
2. City of Life and Death (Nanjing! Nanjing!), The Guardian film page
3. Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death, TIME (May 12, 2009)
4. City of Life and Death, Rotten Tomatoes
5. City of Life and Death, Metacritic
6. City of Life and Death, Fourth Culture Films (sales agent page with awards list)
7. 电影《南京！南京！》资料, 人民网文化频道
8. City of Life and Death film review, Time Out (Joshua Rothkopf, 2011)
9. City of Life and Death (15) review, The Independent (Geoffrey Macnab, 2010)
10. 南京！南京！（2009年陆川执导的电影）, 百度百科
11. 陆川 拍出中国人的抗争, 新浪新闻/南方人物周刊 (2009)
12. China - The pain of war, Screen Daily (Sen-lun Yu, 2009)
13. 《南京！南京！》确定4月上映 陆川曾想放弃, 新浪娱乐/沈阳日报 (2009)
14. 徘徊在写实与写意之间——评《南京！南京》, 北京市东城区人民检察院转载 (2009)
15. City of Life and Death Review, SBS What's On (Russell Edwards, 2010)
16. City of Life and Death critic reviews - Metacritic
17. 《南京！南京！》的创作与接受"研讨会综述, 上海大学学报(社会科学版) 2009年第5期
18. 《南京照相馆》：被普通人"显影"的历史记忆, 中国电影资料馆 (2025)

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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