'NANKING' GIVES WAR A HUMAN FACE.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS

>FILM CRITIC

Through a variety of techniques, "Nanking" illustrates the horrors of war with devastating effectiveness. This documentary is a boon for history buffs and, also, for anyone who appreciates humanitarianism at its most selflessly dedicated.

And it's the kind of movie that people who don't want to look at ugly things won't want to see. I get that, and it's a free country, so nobody has to go. Still, avoiding such an uncompromising and well-made lesson in man's capacity for wartime cruelty -- and in the courage it takes to at least try to prevent some of it -- just seems like cowardice, regardless of how delicate one's sensibilities are.

That said (and I feel a little like that Woody Allen character who kept trying to emotionally blackmail people into seeing "The Sorrow and the Pity"), don't expect to have fun at "Nanking." But you will be dazzled by filmmaking brilliance while you're being quite rightly appalled.

The movie, of course, covers Japan's assault on China's then-capital in 1937 and '38. From punishing air raids to the bloody invasion of the city to the paroxysm of executions, destruction and rape that marked the first six weeks of occupation, directors Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman present the most vivid and disturbing accounts and footage imaginable. Rarely has a film so chillingly evoked what it feels like to be a civilian on the receiving end of modern warfare.

I don't know where the documentarians found so much alarming imagery from the calamity, but they don't stop there. On a Hollywood soundstage, actors quite skillfully read letters and diary entries from Western observers who chose to stay and help whatever suffering Chinese they could. Mostly American missionaries and German businessmen, they established a two-mile safety zone in the ruined city that the Japanese didn't officially recognize, but would more often than not respect. It's estimated that, during the rampage that's believed to have left some 200,000 Chinese dead, 250,000 others were saved by this tiny group's efforts.

Standouts among the reading cast include Woody Harrelson as Bob Wilson, the only surgeon left to care for untold thousands of wounded patients; Mariel Hemingway as Minnie Vautrin, a steadfast Illinoisan who turned her women's college campus into as redoubtable a refuge from rape-minded soldiers as she could; and Jurgen Prochnow as John Rabe, the local Nazi Party chairman who, as the highest-

ranked representative of Japan's staunch ally, was probably the only person in recorded history ever to save lives by brandishing a swastika.

Great as these and other performers are, however, the movie derives its deepest power from old Chinese men and women, most of whom were children when they lived through the assault. One man's description of how his mother tried to feed his bayoneted baby brother while she herself bled to death is just ... well, I find prejudice against any group repugnant, but I don't begrudge him at all his tendency to always follow the word "Japanese" with "devils."

"Nanking" is complete enough of a picture to give now-elderly perpetrators screen time to tell their stories, too. And it's remarkable how some of the American observers, after witnessing so much hatefulness, still wrote that hatred against the Japanese was the last thing they wished to inspire; they just wanted the violence to stop. How remarkable is that, considering American racial attitudes of the time?

Clear in its indictment of a crime against humanity that can never be forgotten and yet so richly sophisticated about the ways in which history and morality never play out simply in times of crisis, "Nanking," to put it simply, is a must see for anyone who wants to consider himself an active member of the human community.

Bob Strauss [phone]

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NANKING - Four stars

>R: violence, sex, nudity, children in peril.

>Starring: Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Jurgen Prochnow, John Getz, Rosalind Chao.

>Directors: Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman.

>Running time: 1 hr. 29 min.

>Playing: Royal, West L.A.

>In a nutshell: Riveting documentary about the Rape of Nanking by Japanese forces in 1937-38, with mesmerizing testimony by survivors and invaders, and actors movingly reading eyewitness accounts.

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