It’s hard to know why movies that tell completely made-up stories often feel more real than those that tell true ones. Maybe it’s because fictionalized versions of real-life events always stir up questions not just about what really happened, but about how that something happened. Watching a filmmaker interpret those events dramatically demands that we trust him or her implicitly: A fiction film based on real events is a kind of shaped reality, which isn’t, of course, reality at all. The best we can do is to trust a filmmaker’s instincts, and his heart.
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REVIEW: Bracing John Rabe Revisits the Horror and Drama of Nanking
