So much attention has been focused on Christian Bale’s return to the role of Batman in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Dark Knight Rises that it’s been easy to forget he has another very substantial film coming out in just a few months’ time.
The Flowers of War, previously titled Nanjing Heroes and 13 Flowers of Nanjing, has already been chosen as China’s entry into the Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film category, directed by renowned director Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers).
The first trailer for the film has now arrived, via Twitch Film, giving us a look at what promises to be a very powerful film. It’s an incredibly interesting choice for Bale to get involved with the project, making this his next film following on from his Oscar-winning turn in last year’s The Fighter.
The film is set in 1937 during the Nanking Massacre, in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Based on the novel The 13 Women of Nanjing, by Geling Yan, the film is based upon the life of John Magee (Bale), an American priest who helps a group of Chinese women escape their deaths during the six weeks following the Imperial Japanese Army’s invasion of the city of Nanking. (The city itself is known both as ‘Nanking’ and ‘Nanjing’.)
The production is China’s most expensive film to date, with a budget of m., and the dialogue will see a mixture of English, Mandarin, and Japanese, with up to 40% of the language in English, and the remaining 60% made up by the other two. It will be getting its Chinese release on 16th December, and plans are underway to roll it out across the rest of the world, so hopefully we’ll be seeing this towards the end of the year or the start of next year, in time for the Oscars.
Without further ado, here’s the first trailer for The Flowers of War. It looks like powerful stuff.
