Message from thowlett

[Anonymous]

The Flowers of War depicts the rape of Nanjing, when Japanese forces overtake China. In the film, Christian Bale plays an American mortician who in the middle of these circumstances finds himself arriving at a convent. The convent is serving as a safe haven to several young girls who didn’t flee Nanjing in time and are now in Japanese occupied territory. A group of prostitutes arrive at the convent seeking refuge. They are hid in the basement while John Miller (Christian Bale) attempts to repair a truck in hopes of helping the girls escape from the Nanjing. In this time of war, the Japanese soldiers arrive at the convent looking for women to rape. The prostitutes sacrifice themselves to the Japanese in place of the convent girls. This chronicle depicts a human interest story of martyrdom, in which one group sacrifices themselves to save another. It also shows the brutality and history associated with the rape of Nanjing and what Chinese refer to as a time of immense “humiliation” for their country.