生命的每一个无谓的牺牲最终似乎都会有自己的催人泪下的故事。这是为《金陵十三钗》进行辩护的唯一方式，在这部影片里，资深的中国导演张艺谋回顾1937年的南京大屠杀的方式是某种类似于后台歌舞剧，偶尔会被可怕的谋杀或者强奸打断的东西。

  并不是说残暴的大片就得自行成为一场灾难；像《乱世佳人(Gone with the wind)》、《加里波底（Gallipoli）》就有自己的优点。但是，在《金陵十三钗》两个半小时 远没有耗光之前，这部影片就已经陷入了所描述事件与张先生对其疏远又奇怪的轻薄处理之间的不平衡—从本质上来说，这种处理是指他拒绝对中国历史最可怕的篇 章之一表明立场。

  由于费用高昂、国家认可，并已申奥，《金陵十三钗》得到了充分的宣传，上周这种声音更是尘嚣日上，彼时该片的英国影星，克里斯蒂安·贝尔（Christian Bale）对......的拜访被强行阻止。(此处省略数字)

  但是如果简单地认为张先生只会对日本人侵略和占领南京采取一种肤浅的、爱国的办法处理，这种恐惧是错位的，尽管这不是完全没有依据。其他最近的一些中国电影已经更多展现的是充满感情色彩的爱国主义(链接例子：《唐山大地震》)、 沙文主义 (链接例子：《陈真》)以及日本军队的妖魔化 (链接例子：《叶问》) 。

  他对1937年事件的真正处理方式是用其作为一种奢华的、受好莱坞启发的情节剧的背景，这些也让他成为艺术电影的宠儿。此过程中，大部分的元素他都没有能够实现— 宏伟、历史背景、真正的悲怆，这些东西本该可令此片更有价值。

  只要故事合适，正如《大红灯笼高高挂》或者《十面埋伏》里面一样，张先生对优美外观近乎临床式的关注以及肥皂剧式的结构会产生有趣的结果。然而，在 《金陵十三钗》当中，你能够感觉到他跟自己的材料在做斗争，根本无法定调，或者停留在一个引人入胜的叙述上，甚至连故事的连贯性都做不到。（剧本由刘恒与 严歌苓编写，原著是严歌苓女士）

  张先生与大屠杀故事大格局之间的距离体现在他决定将影片的大部分场景局限在一个虚构的欧式教堂区里面。其结果是一种人造的外景氛围；开场是从街道开始，进行一场真正硝烟弥漫的战争，烟雾（以及某处一大堆面粉激起的粉尘）将人物与现实世界的南京隔绝开来。

  贝尔先生扮演约翰·米勒（John Miller），一位名声不好的美国流浪汉，机缘巧合，此人成为了一名殡葬员；影片开始时他正在穿过一场进攻教堂的战斗，然后有人出钱让他在那里主持一场 葬礼。还有两群人赶往这里，各有大概12人左右的青年女子，也即本片中的十三钗。如果没有可靠的历史参照的话，她们属于一种产品设计，被形象地符号化为： 穿着蓝色素袍的修道院学生以及穿着五彩斑斓的性感旗袍的妓女。

  各方均在教堂中避难，穿上死去牧师的长袍的米勒，在楼上的猜疑学生和处于守势躲在地下室的自卑妓女（她们迅速将地窖变成了闺房；你几乎可以闻到香水 的味道）之间架起二元论者（Manichaean，摩尼教徒）的桥梁。这是事件的一种不自然的、温床般的状态，可以概括为张先生酷爱之极乃至于不断重复的 场景：笑着的妓女以慢镜头摇曳着穿越教堂院落，对即将到来的灾难不以为然。

  当然，灾难必至，尽管大难临头时影片采用了一种拐弯抹角的古怪形式。一群人最终做了似乎是终极的自我牺牲，这种牺牲充满着性别上和社会化的弦外之 音，不过这发生在镜头之外，如果曾有此事的话。影片结构的这种含煳其辞，也许可以被解释为— 故事是有其中的一位学生旁白讲述的，而我们所看到的，可能就相 当于她选择性的、罗曼蒂克化的回忆，不过事实上这不能成为借口。

  与此同时，屏幕上镜头冒险摇向了外面的世界，偶尔闪过的几个场景似乎是为了加快动作并让大家记住自己正在观看一部战争片。在张先生对中国至上主义概 念仅有的几个让步之一当中，一位军官（佟大为）出于夸张的英雄主义，孤身一人吸引了一支日本小分队离开教堂。随后，显然是在感伤的屈服之下，两位妓女离开 了教堂，去执行那种只会在电影中才会发生的疯狂的怜悯行动，其后果尤其令人不安。除了这一系列事件以外，张先生对日本人的暴行的叙述表现出了克制，大都以表现威胁和恐吓的形式。

  贝尔先生交出了值得尊敬的表演，在那种情况下如果说是活泼的表演的话有点古怪，他的任务是不幸的，要扮演一个实际上不合理的角色。米勒从机会主义者 到救世主的转变可能是这类电影的必备元素，但是展现其转变的场景却交代得很匆忙且低效。张先生把一位美国人当做了自己影片的中心人物，却又让他简化为跟适 婚女性那样吵个不停，就像加里·格兰特（Cary Grant）在暴力得多的《呆鹅爸爸（Father Goose）》里面一样。

  另外还有几部反映南京大屠杀的电影，包括由陆川执导的悲惨的情节剧 《南京！南京（City of Life and Death）》,以及由比尔·古藤塔（Bill Guttentag）和丹·史度曼（Dan Sturman）的纪录片《南京（Nanking）》，跟这些炒作没那么厉害但是质量远超自己的影片相比，《金陵十三钗》会很痛苦。那些制片人是带着观点 来的。而张先生呢，则是退避到旧电影的迷雾当中，拒绝上场战斗。

英文原文来自《纽约时报》网站:

There’s nothing that says the atrocity blockbuster has to be a disaster in its own right; films like “Gone With the Wind” and “Gallipoli” have their good points. But long before its two and a half hours are up, “The Flowers of War” is sunk by the disproportion between the events being portrayed and Mr. Zhang’s distanced, strangely frivolous treatment of them — in essence, his refusal to take a point of view on one of the most gruesome chapters in Chinese history.  

“Flowers” has received bountiful publicity for being expensive, state-approved and Oscar-submitted, buzz that got louder last week when the film’s British star, Christian Bale, was forcibly prevented from visiting......(a few words omitted) 

But fears that Mr. Zhang would take a one-dimensional, patriotic approach to the Japanese invasion and occupation of Nanjing (formerly Nanking), while not entirely unfounded, are misplaced. Other recent Chinese films have displayed more sentimental nationalism, jingoism and demonization of the Japanese enemy.  

His real approach to the events of 1937 is to use them as a backdrop for the kind of deluxe, Hollywood-inspired melodrama that has made him an art-house favorite. In the process he fails to deliver on most of the elements — grandeur, historical sweep, genuine pathos — that would have made the film worthwhile.  

Given the right story, as in “Raise the Red Lantern” or “House of the Flying Daggers,” Mr. Zhang’s almost clinical attention to pretty surfaces and soap-opera mechanics can have entertaining results. In “Flowers,” though, you can feel him at war with his material, never settling on a tone or a compelling or even coherent narrative. (The screenplay is by Liu Heng and Geling Yan, based on a novel by Ms. Yan.)  

Mr. Zhang’s distance from the larger story of the massacre is embodied in his decision to set most of the film within the compound of a fictional European church. The result is an artificial, back-lot atmosphere; the opening scenes, set in the streets, take place in an actual fog of war, with smoke (and at one point the dust from a large mound of flour) isolating the characters from the real world of Nanjing.  

Mr. Bale plays John Miller, a disreputable American vagabond who happens to be a mortician; as the film begins he is making his way through the fighting toward the church, where he is to be paid to conduct a burial. Also on the move are two groups of a dozen or so young women, the flowers of the title. They are, as a matter of production design if not credible history, visually coded: convent students in severe blue jackets and prostitutes in seductive, rainbow-hued silken dresses.  

All of these parties take refuge in the church, with Miller, who dons the robes of a dead priest, bridging the Manichaean divide between the suspicious students upstairs and the contemptuous, defensive prostitutes hiding in the basement. (They quickly transform their cellar into a seraglio; you can practically smell the perfume.) It’s a contrived, hothouse state of affairs, summed up in a scene Mr. Zhang likes so much that he repeats it: the laughing prostitutes sashaying across the churchyard in slow motion, oblivious to the impending tragedy.  

There will be tragedy, of course, though when it comes it takes a weirdly oblique form. One group eventually performs what appears to be an ultimate sacrifice, full of sexual and social overtones, but this happens off-camera, if it happens at all. The coyness can be explained, perhaps, in terms of the film’s structure — the story is narrated by one of the students, and what we see may correspond to her selective, romanticized memories — but it cannot really be excused.  

On-screen, meanwhile, the camera ventures into the outside world in occasional scenes that seem timed to goose the action and remind us that we’re watching a war movie. In one of Mr. Zhang’s few outright concessions to the notion of Chinese supremacism, a lone officer (Tong Dawai) draws a contingent of Japanese soldiers away from the church in an act of hyperbolic heroism. Later, in a surrender to gross sentimentality, two prostitutes leave the church on the sort of insane mercy mission that happens only in movies, with particularly disturbing consequences. Aside from that sequence Mr. Zhang is restrained in his depictions of Japanese brutality, which mostly take the form of threats and intimidation.  

Mr. Bale, turning in a respectable if oddly chipper performance under the circumstances, has the unfortunate task of playing a character who doesn’t really add up. Miller’s conversion from opportunist to savior may be another stock element of this sort of movie, but the scene meant to showcase his transformation is rushed and ineffective. Having made an American the central figure in his film, Mr. Zhang reduces him to wrangling flocks of nubile women, like Cary Grant in a much more violent “Father Goose.”

“The Flowers of War” suffers greatly in comparison to several far superior, less hyped movies about the Nanjing massacre, including the harrowing drama “City of Life and Death,” directed by Lu Chuan, and the documentary “Nanking,” by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman. Those filmmakers came armed with points of view. Mr. Zhang, retreating into the mists of old movies, has declined to take the field.  

“The Flowers of War” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). War violence and sexual assault.  

THE FLOWERS OF WAR

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Directed by Zhang Yimou; written by Liu Heng and Geling Yan, based on the novel by Ms. Yan; director of photography, Zhao Xiaoding; edited by Meng Peicong; music by Chan Quigang; production design by Yohei Taneda; costumes by William Chang Suk-Ping; produced by Zhang Weiping; released by Wrekin Hill Entertainment in association with Row 1 Production. In Mandarin and English, with English subtitles. At the Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema, 139-143 East Houston Street, East Village. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.

WITH: Christian Bale (John Miller), Ni Ni ( Yu Mo), Zhang Xinyi (Shu), Huang Tianyuan (George Chen), Tong Dawai (Major Li), Atsuro Watabe (Colonel Hasegawa), Shigeo Kobayashi (Lieutenant Kato) and Cao Kefan (Mr. Meng).