In the past few days, we’ve seen a beautiful set of posters and dozens of great images for this year’s Oscar entry from China, The Flowers of War, previously titled Nanjing Heroes and 13 Flowers of Nanjing.
The film, which is led by Christian Bale, has renowned director Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) at the helm, and we got our first look at it back in October with an incredibly powerful first trailer.
We’ve now got the first US trailer for the film to share with you, via Collider, and it is every bit as powerful as the first. A few of the shots we get in this new look are things we saw in the first trailer, but the vast majority is new here, and it all looks incredibly well done, not to mention incredibly moving.
“Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, Hero, House of the Flying Daggers) tells an epic story of love and sacrifice in THE FLOWERS OF WAR, starring Christian Bale and introducing Ni Ni.
The film, set during the Japanese invasion of China, is told from a young girl’s point of view, not as a history lesson, but as an intimate, elemental and paradoxically universal celebration of the human spirit. Bale stars as a dissolute Westerner who seeks refuge in a Catholic Church. There he meets a beautiful Chinese courtesan who helps him rescue a group of schoolgirls from a terrible fate at the hands of the Japanese.
The film represents one of China’s most ambitious productions, involving the recreation of 1937 Nanking built from scratch over a one-year period and the collaboration of one of Hollywood’s most sought after leading men (Christian Bale).”
The Flowers of War is due out on Friday in China, and will be getting an Oscar-qualifying limited release in the States before the end of the year. Still no word yet on a UK release date, but I’m hoping it won’t be long into 2012 before we get to see it in our cinemas. It looks so good. Without further ado, here’s the powerful new trailer; I dare you not to be moved by it.
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whb0Lw5YoOg’]
