The Nanjing Photo Studio: As powerful as it is disturbing (review)
A chilling blockbuster that revisits the massacre of the Chinese by the imperial army by scrutinizing the production of images where truth and propaganda engage in a fierce duel.
The Nanjing Photo Studio dives into the heart of the 1937 massacre through the story of a photo studio requisitioned by the Japanese army. Shen Ao depicts a perverse spiral: in this place, people begin to produce official clichés intended to celebrate a “harmonious” occupation, while outside, atrocities accumulate. In this closed door saturated with fear, a postman who became an apprentice developer discovers the extent of Japanese crimes by seeing forbidden images revealed in chemical baths. The survival of the fugitives hidden under the floor is coupled with another mission: saving the evidence.
The film oscillates between the great fresco of chaos – crowd massacres, panicking streets – and the claustrophobic tension in the darkness of the lab. Shen films horror without gratuity, but with an intensity that rarely lets you breathe. In this register, the scene of massacre on the banks of the Yangtze is almost unbearable. The nuance comes from a military photographer overwhelmed by the barbarity he captures, the only crack in a story that banishes any ambivalence on the Japanese side. And if the finale veers into patriotic melodrama, this excess says as much about the Chinese desire to take control of its national story as it does our discomfort as Westerners in the face of a cinema where denunciation and exaltation merge – without ever seeking to apologize for it. The result is a spectacle as powerful as it is disturbing. Unforgettable?
GG
Go there if you liked: City of Life and Death (2009) Sacrifice of War (2011), Schindler’s List (1994)
Nanjing Zhao Xiang Guan Country: China Of : Shen Ao With Liu Haoran, Xiao Wang, Ye Gao Duration : 2h17
