Friends of Socialist China (FOSC) was grateful to be invited to the European premiere of the film Dongji Rescue by the Chinese Embassy. The screening took place in the Odeon Luxe in Leicester Square, a grand venue fit for the opening of such a blockbuster film, attended by some of China’s biggest acting stars. The premiere took place on the 15th of August, the 80th anniversary of VJ day, commemorating the allied victory over imperial Japan in World War Two, the most appropriate date for a film examining the shared Chinese and British fight against fascism.
We are very pleased to publish the following review by FOSC Britain Committee member Alfie Howis and hope that as many as possible of our readers take the opportunity to see this inspiring and moving film.
Dongji Rescue is effectively a follow up to the documentary The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru which was released earlier this year. The documentary was a groundbreaking study of the sinking of a Japanese ship off China in 1942 by a US submarine, killing over 800 British POWs onboard who had been captured in Hong Kong, with 384 others rescued from the water by Chinese villagers from the nearby island. The film follows the story of the people on Dongji Island defying their Japanese occupiers and setting sail to rescue, and fight alongside, the drowning British soldiers at the shipwreck. The film was made possible as part of an initiative by the Chinese government to promote media about the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-fascist War, to maintain accurate memory of Japanese imperialism and learn lessons from the successful fight against it.
“At the darkest hour of the Second World War, China and the UK fought on different fronts but shared a common mission: to defend humanity against fascism and aggression. Fighting side by side, the peoples of our two countries forged a deep friendship,” said Chinese Ambassador Zheng Zeguang at the premiere. Public awareness of China’s role in WW2 is deeply lacking in Britain, and even where there is knowledge of it, the scale of China’s contribution, even beyond their own fight for national liberation, is lost on most. Dongji Rescue, which is now on general release across UK cinemas, will go some way to rectifying that and may help contribute to a deepening of the understanding of this topic.
Dongji Rescue is a film about heroism, solidarity, and anti-fascism, but above all it shows the power of collective, militant struggle to resist oppression and take the most just course of action. Throughout the film there are individual heroes, but the central junction of the narrative is the collective decision of the islanders, after wavering on the part of some, to rise up against the Japanese occupation, take to their boats, and risk death together in order to save the soldiers. This would not have been possible without all of the boats taking to the seas as one in a unified action, able to overwhelm the Japanese forces on the sinking ship and provide enough space to rescue hundreds of POWs. The sense of solidarity that the villagers embody as they liberated themselves, however briefly, from occupation is extended to the British men as they share the same struggle in that one moment, both fighting for their lives under attack from the same seemingly overwhelming force, in the end blunted by their collective bravery and resistance. Even the regimented and rank subordinated POWs can only succeed through self-organised collective efforts. Whether freeing themselves from the locked hold or flipping Japanese motorboats, the reactive instinct of the men goes beyond the orders from their commanders and is more akin to the spirit embodied by the islanders, which ultimately saves many of their lives.
The urge that the Chinese had to rescue the POWs can be explained by this quote from a Global Times review of the film: “The Chinese fishermen may not have understood grand notions of internationalism, but their instinct to save lives epitomizes the purest form of humanitarianism.” At the start, the islanders were suspicious of the first man they rescued, not knowing why he didn’t speak Chinese and even getting angry at him thinking he was a thief. They only learnt who he was through the actions of the Japanese occupiers as they sought the POW’s recapture and ultimately executed him. Then the villagers understood that the POWs were on their side in the fight against Japan and immediately unified their struggle. Beyond that, the willingness of the unarmed islanders to sail headfirst into what seemed like certain death to rescue strangers is remarkable, as a historical event and as brought to life by the film. It shows that a humanitarian instinct is alive in everyone, and in this case was felt very strongly by a highly oppressed, poor, and occupied group of people. Not only did they feel this solidarity, but acted upon it, not without fear or an understanding of the immense risk, but with a bravery that acknowledged that and still went forward. Although dramatic and arcing towards blockbuster sensation in its crescendo, Dongji Rescue did well not to whitewash the doubts and fears that the islanders rightly had about their actions, and showed that taking the right path necessarily comes with sacrifice and pain.
Although the victory of collective action defines the film, the individual heroes represent the subversion of class and gender hierarchies, showing that only the most oppressed and marginalised islanders were able to galvanise and lead the entire island to action. Two of the heroes are pirate brothers, who from the opening scene are already defying the occupation’s ban on fishing, when they encounter an overboard soldier from the ship, starting the island’s engagement with the sinking incident. The brothers live away from the main village, leading a relatively freer life, resulting in disputes with the other islanders who do not want to bend the rules for fear of punishment. But sticking to the rules did not improve their situation, with multiple islanders, including even children, arbitrarily murdered long before the uprising despite trying to be compliant. In the end one of the brothers leads the islanders in rebellion, singlehandedly killing all four Japanese soldiers in the occupation garrison, in a gruesome but satisfying scene, after seeing a fellow islander executed. Both brothers end up killed during the course of their actions, preventing an overfocus on individual saviours but also showing the sacrifice and loss that comes with struggle. They are not superheroes whose chests bounce off bullets or who can develop fantastical armours as in Avengers and its associated Western genre, but regular, fallible people who take real risks and have a high chance of succumbing to them.
Another key hero is Ah Hua, a woman islander in a relationship with one of the pirates but not allowed to set sail due to archaic gender restrictions in the village. It’s commendable that the film brings this aspect in. In addition to foreign occupation, the traditional gendered system of the island is also an oppressing force holding the people back from liberation. Ah Hua, after much contemplation and consultation with her ancestors’ tomb, breaks the patriarchal system and leads the village fleet out to the wreck. Notably, the village seems to recognise the need for this to happen, and she doesn’t face any resistance in the end, demonstrating that in the face of national oppression, women’s liberation comes as a necessary, practical step towards emancipation for all. During the climatic scenes of rescue we see many women sailors and some women only ships at the front of the fleet, foregrounding their role in the incident and showing the importance of An Hua’s actions to the eventual victory.
The atrocities and massacres committed by the Japanese, especially the deliberate killing of children, felt very familiar to the images currently coming from Gaza every day. It reminds us that foreign occupation is a particularly brutal and transhistorical form of oppression. The principles and actions which led the Chinese people to victory in the film and in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression should inspire us today in fighting Zionist fascism and for the liberation of Palestine. In Britain, commemoration of VJ day remains a lowkey event, despite the late and half-hearted calling of two minutes of silence and a broadcast from King Charles. Indeed, even such token words and gestures feel hollow when Britain is enabling fascism and genocide in Palestine today. Dongji Rescue shows us some of the paths to resisting fascism and occupation – collective uprising, a vanguard forged by the most oppressed, and instinctive international solidarity put into action. Hopefully the ideas embodied in this film will continue to imbue future Chinese cinema as it increasingly comes to Britain and the West and can disburse cultural exposure to these values that Britain sorely needs. Similarly, Dongji Rescue must serve as a warning against allowing Japanese militarism to rise again, which is currently occurring as Japan takes on its biggest rearmament since it was defeated in 1945, whilst threatening China and its peaceful activities in the East China Sea. Therefore, it is timely and welcome for such high-profile media as this to revisit and reexamine the period and reiterate the comprehensive defeat of imperial Japan and the reasons why it should never be allowed to go down the road of militarism again.
Dongji Rescue is distributed by Trinity CineAsia and is on general release in the UK and Ireland. Details of screenings may be found here.
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