‘Life and Death’ opens window to China atrocity

Harrowing and unflinching, a savage nightmare so consuming and claustrophobic you will want to leave but fear to go, “City of Life and Death” is a cinematic experience unlike any you’ve had before.

It’s a film strong enough to change your life, if you can bear to watch it at all.

The third film by formidable Chinese director Lu Chuan, “City of Life and Death” takes as its subject the infamous atrocity known as the rape of Nanking. That was the 1937-’38 Japanese takeover of China’s then-capital city that led to the deaths of an estimated 300,000 civilians as well as sexual assaults said to number in the tens of thousands.

As a portrait of the unspeakable things that can happen when soldiers are let loose on a civilian population, “City of Life and Death” is (as the opening section of “Saving Private Ryan” was for combat) in a class by itself as it cuts back and forth between the experiences of several individuals on both sides of the massacre.

Working with superb cinematographer Cao Yu, Lu Chuan has chosen to shoot “City” in stunning widescreen black-and-white, expertly filling the frame with arresting compositions, whether of combat, atrocities or tears, images that are never expected and never without maximum impact.

Most of the film is shot using a peering, probing handheld camera that creates intimacy and intensifies emotion. Some scenes are so effectively re-created it’s as if the film has somehow captured documentary reality with a long-forgotten hidden camera.

Hard as it is to watch, we dare not look away. “City of Life and Death” is a necessary reminder of what we’ve allowed ourselves to forget because memory is too painful to sustain.

If we had more dramatic experiences like this one, perhaps we would work harder to see that they’re never repeated for real.