Sinking the Lisbon Maru Review – British tragedy in wartime told with powerful empathy | Films

THis fascinating and crushing of Chinese documentary benefits from excellent material: The own yarn of a dark boy from October 1942 About the torpedoing of the war -weller Lisbon Maru, the attempted mass murder of the 1,816 British prisoners of war on board by their Japanese abductors, and their salvation by Chinese fishermen from the Zhoushan archipelago. Directors Fang Li, Ming Fan and Lily Gong do an exemplary task of telling this tragedy of the British, Chinese and (to a certain extent) Japanese perspectives with a penetrating empathy.

An oceanic sense of loss penetrates the film. Fang, a former geophysicist and the presenter on the camera, first investigated the wreck of Lisbon Maru in 2016 100 miles southeast of Shanghai. Now he leads the depths of the time to reconstruct his story, save the testimony of the families of the prisoners of war, and ultimately finding the two remaining survivors, Nonagenians Dennis Morley and William Beningfield (who died). Morley says that his daughter and granddaughter knew nothing about his test; A silence practiced by countless others, including the Japanese civil captain who was later convicted of his role. His surprised children get the news here from Fang.

Morley and Beningfield’s words, a series of historical reports and artistic animation from the horror. The British soldiers were transported in the load of the Lisbon Maru in unspeakable circumstances, and after the attack by an American submarine, the shutters were swept when the ship started sinking. Perhaps to give them the illusion they would be saved, the prisoners were told to pump the ball; They worked for hours in four men, five -minute shifts in the dark. One squaddie, in the conviction that he was in hell, went crazy. The rigid upper lip factor seems to have only benefited the escapes in the short term; Decades later, family members testify a grim history of PTSD symptoms.

Fang’s Evenak Humanism enables him to dig up this emotional wreck on all sides, although the Japanese remains cloudy. While he locates the family of the American torpedoan who persuaded the tractor, there is no voice of the Japanese army here. The country has, of course, gone further than the imperial arrogance that finally saw his troops run their weapons on the desperate British, but it is a hair -raising memory for our relapse times of the importance of international law.

The only real mistake of the film is occasionally a sentimentality; It could have done without the syrupy torch song about the roll -call of the Fallen. Otherwise it is powerful things; A blockbuster treatment, called Dongji Island, is due to the summer, but it is difficult to see that it influences more than this.