Chinese director Sun Lijun is making a movie scheduled for release on International Children’s Day that will have a messages about the importance of loving your nation and the value of tolerance good aim.
The film chronicles the adventures in the 1930s of Little Zhang, a cute 12-year-old boy feeling his way through an unfriendly world. But the resemblance to Pinocchio ends there. After Japanese invaders shoot Little Zhang’s grandmother in the back, the boy seeks revenge by joining an underground Red Army detachment.
He moves among heroic Chinese patriots, sniveling collaborators and sadistic Japanese. The finale comes with Little Zhang helping blow up a trainload of Japanese soldiers and receiving a cherished reward: a pistol with which to kill more Japanese.
“I thought about including one sympathetic Japanese character, but this is an anti-Japan war movie and I don’t want to confuse anyone,” says Sun, who will premier his film on International Children’s Day.
One hopeful sign is that this is from a China Daily item that is mildly critical of China’s own education system and entertainment media for preaching hate. The article doesn’t, however, seem like a fully state-approved item. This line in the conclusion, for instance, is pretty off the mark from what the central party would want stated.:
Most Japanese are aware of what happened but their society has never engaged in the type of introspection common in Germany after the Holocaust. Carefully worded official apologies have landed far short of the five-star kowtow demanded by Beijing,
It is not typical for the state press to use terms such as kowtow, or to suggest that the Beijing leaders are ‘demanding. It is, however, common in China for movie reviews - even of movies still in production - to give away the whole plot.
AP withholds opinion.
UPDATE: The source is Time magazine, and Will at Imagethief has further comment and a great essay on Sino-Japan relations,)
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