Home > Drama >

John Rabe

John Rabe (2009)

April. 02,2009
|
7.2
| Drama History War

A true-story account of a German businessman who saved more than 200,000 Chinese during the Nanjing massacre in 1937-38.

...

Watch Trailer

Cast

Similar titles

Reviews

Micitype
2009/04/02

Pretty Good

More
Stevecorp
2009/04/03

Don't listen to the negative reviews

More
Donald Seymour
2009/04/04

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

More
Billy Ollie
2009/04/05

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

More
SnoopyStyle
2009/04/06

It's 1937. John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) runs the Siemens plant in Nanking, China. He dismisses news of Japanese massacres. He is ordered back to Berlin when the Japanese attack. He saved the Chinese workers from the bombings under the Nazi flag. He ignores orders to close the plant. He is selected to organize a safe zone within the city with the help of the other westerners. Dr. Rosen (Daniel Brühl) with a Jewish ancestor is an assistant under German Ambassador Trautmann. Valérie Dupres runs a school for girls. Robert Wilson (Steve Buscemi) is an American doctor. Rabe decides to stay sending his wife on a ship. The ship is sunk and his wife is presumably lost.This is a compelling story of a Nazi saving war victims due to his humanity. The obvious comparison is Schindler's List. It is a straight forward telling. The difference is the emotional arc. Rabe is not quite as emotional and his Germanness keeps the story from elevating higher. It does put the lesser known history on the big screen. The history is compelling with some good tension and needs to be told.

More
Hunky Stud
2009/04/07

Many people knew about the Holocaust happened in Europe, but so few people knew about the massacre happened in Nanjing - capital city of Republic of China.This is an excellent movie, too bad, it wasn't shown at many movie theaters in the USA. This could help people to know what the Japanese did to defenseless Chinese people during world war ii. The scenes are shocking and graphic, but that is what the Japanese soldiers did.Even today, some Japanese still refuse to believe the appalling atrocities. This is an excellent movie for the event. Even though John Rabe was a Nazi member, but what he did he in Nanjing was heroic. He could be given the Nobel peace prize for saving over 20,000 innocent Chinese people.This film is truly an international collaboration from actors all over the world just like those people who saved so many people in 1937. I highly recommend it.

More
Radu_A
2009/04/08

... essentially all has been said, but some reviews criticize the diversions from the original story. These would seem to have something to do with Chinese censorship following concerns about economic cooperation with Japan. That may explain the sometimes disjointed story structure, and the inclusion of a 'good' Japanese officer warning the Germans about imminent danger to the safety zone, while there is still ample display of Japanese brutality - even though, if you ever visited the memorial in Nanjing itself, you'll find these rather tame in comparison to the photos there.At the time of its release in Germany, reviews were largely negative because Rabe's Nazi Party membership was downplayed in the film. His naivety in regard to Hitler is portrayed (writing him letters urging Hitler to intervene on behalf of the safety zone), but this was seen as way too ambivalent. Gallenberger was criticized for making a 'big' film with Hollywood clichés. And instead of a competition slot at the Berlinale, the film was screened as a 'Special' because the festival apparently shied away from controversy. Having only seen it now for these reasons, I must say that these complaints are exaggerated. There's nothing wrong with a German director trying to make a real cinematic feature instead of an overblown TV production, as it is usually the case. And Gallenberger was certainly the right man for the job, given his previous endeavor of a German Bollywood film. Sadly, the entirely justified vilification of the Nazi regime still clouds the perception of individuals living in that era, and there's some sort of German instinct to snap at everything that could be even remotely interpreted as euphemism - which isn't the case here.What I really liked about the film was that it clarifies that the safety zone was an international 'joint venture' so to speak, instead of being due to the efforts of Rabe alone. Buscemi played all the right keys with his character, and still restrained his presence to allow Ulrich Tukur to take central stage. And his performance is definitely worth the BlueRay. He is one of the very few German actors with aura; Daniel Brühl, in my opinion, isn't, but he's pretty good here, as his scenes with Tukur are balanced very well.If you found John Rabe's story amazing, you might be interested in the even more controversial Johannes Lepsius, who was the principal witness of the Armenian Genocide during World War I - under similar circumstances, as Germany and Turkey were allies, as with the Japanese at the time of the Nanjing Massacre. I couldn't help but think of that while watching 'John Rabe' - that a film based on Lepsius would be far more controversial than this one, since Turkey denies the Armenian genocide to this day even more vehemently than Japan denies Nanjing.I give 'John Rabe' 8/10 because I feel this film has been treated a little harshly, but 7.5 sounds just about right.

More
comeau
2009/04/09

JOHN RABE is a well-enough-made war movie set in Nanking at the time of the Japanese siege.*minor spoilers ahead* The story is fairly cookie-cutter (though "true"). In fact, the 'hero' John Rabe does not really seem to be much of one, though nor is he an anti-hero. He is more or less a corporate (Siemens) functionary with a solid German character. He is also as it happens a Nazi party member (as were many) and a firm believer in Hitler (as were many), who does not find much reason to question these beliefs during the span of the film. Fine. At the end, when throngs of Chinese chant his name as the Japanese expel him from Nanking, it is both jarring and perplexing, since he doesn't really appear to have much to do with the people of Nanking during the movie. We can therefore only assume his legend preceded him... although nothing up till this point had suggested this Rabe might be the stuff of legend.*spoilers end* As usual, a ragtag band of white people (led by two "principled Germans", proving "they weren't all bad" a la Schindler and von Stauffenberg) set the moral tone and fight courageously to protect the hapless and defenseless "native" population. That may in fact have been the case, though I really tend to doubt it. And, even if it was exactly thus, it is a scarcely defensible narrative for such a movie in 2009.In the final analysis JOHN RABE seems to have been made as crowd-pleasing award-bait, and judging by the German Film Awards it has racked up it can already be judged as success in those terms. Although the film industry in Germany being what it is, that could also mean simply that there wasn't much in the way of competition this year...Gallenbarter, a 'blue-blood' who won a short film Oscar several year's ago, and who specializes in cultural appropriation (though at least there were a couple of Europeans in this one, not just poor/wretched people of colour), will have wanted to be sure that the fate of his little-watched first feature would not be replicated here. Thus the broadest of broad strokes, sweeping orchestral movements to let us know when we should be feeling something, nothing remotely controversial or 'interesting'... again, in terms of its apparent objectives JOHN RABE can only be termed a success.Juergen Juerges' cinematography as always provides a bright stop in the otherwise unremarkable proceedings.

More