Nanjing native Lijia Zhang, a writer, said that many here believed the film glorified Japanese soldiers but that she had mixed emotions.
"I understand the hatred. The atrocities were incredibly brutal, but the Japanese were still human," she said. "But for most Chinese what happened in Nanjing is still a running sore. This victim mentality is a form of narrow nationalism. It's a pity."
In 2006, director Clint Eastwood received muted criticism from some U.S. Republicans for his sympathetic view of Japanese soldiers in "Letters From Iwo Jima," which was lauded by film critics in Japan.
But unlike in China, there was no public outrage in the U.S.
At the same time, some Chinese viewers of "City of Life and Death" have been impressed.
"I thought it was very objective," said Chen, 22. "Governments declare wars, ordinary people fight them."
Li Ang, a Beijing theater general manager, said: "Whether you like it or not, the film shows history as it was, not just the Chinese side. It didn't promote the Japanese. It merely related untold truths."
Some strong critics of Japan agree that there is room for Lu's vision.
"This is an artistic work, so we cannot expect every detail to be true," said Wang Jinsi, a member of China's War of Resistance Against Japan Assn. "China is now a much more pluralistic society. We should allow for different voices."
Lu has told reporters that many of the film's Japanese actors who had initially disagreed about the scope of the Imperial Army's crimes in Nanjing later found the filming difficult.
"They cried and asked to leave because the atrocities in the massacre, like raping and killing, drove them crazy," he said. "I think their pain and confusion were just what I wanted to present in the movie."
The film has yet to be screened in Japanese theaters. Lu has said he would offer it free to distributors.
For him, no criticism could match the four-year project's emotional toll. "My heart was in pain and darkness," he told the state-run New China News Agency. "It was like in hell."
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john.glionna@latimes.com
Eliot Gao of The Times' Beijing Bureau and Ju-min Park of the Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.
