Empire of the Sun Review

If you've read my Viewpoints reviews in the Movies & DVDs category on a regular basis, you probably noticed that I'm a big fan of Steven Spielberg's movies.

To be honest, there are some Spielberg films I really can't stomach.  I fell asleep during theatrical screenings of Always and Hook, and I have never wanted to go see The Terminal even though it stars Tom Hanks.

Most of the time, though, I thoroughly enjoy the films of Steven Spielberg; they can be sheer escapist fun (the Indiana Jones series), sentimental Americana (E.T.), true science fiction (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park), scary-but-action packed (Jaws), or downright dramatic (The Sugarland Express).

In the mid-1980s, Spielberg's movies began to veer from the crowd-pleasing spectacles to more mature films; 1986's The Color Purple earned Oprah Winfrey her Best Supporting Actress Oscar and really put Whoopi Goldberg on the serious-actors' map, but Spielberg himself was snubbed when he was not even nominated for Best Director.

This more "adult" tonality surfaced again in 1987 when Warner Bros. released Empire of the Sun, an adaptation (by playwright/screenwriter Tom Stoppard) of J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel about a young British boy who is separated from his parents during Japan's 1941 conquest of Shanghai and spends most of the war in an internment camp outside the city.

Narrator: [title card] In 1941 China and Japan had been in a state of undeclared war for four years. A Japanese army of occupation was in control of much of the countryside and many towns and cities. In Shanghai thousands of Westerners, protected by the diplomatic security of the International Settlement, continued to live as they had lived since the British came here in the 19th century and built in the image of their own country... built banking houses, hotels, offices, churches and homes that might have been uprooted from Liverpool or Surrey. Now their time was running out. Outside Shanghai the Japanese dug in and waited... for Pearl Harbor

Empire of the Sun is told from the point of British schoolboy Jamie Graham (Christian Bale), a well-read if somewhat spoiled 12-year-old who lives in Shanghai, China, with his well-to-do parents in what was a geographical anomaly: the International Settlement.

At the turn of the 20th century, the West's imperial powers had carved out sectors of Shanghai and transformed them into small, self-contained pockets of Europe and the U.S. Schools, churches, homes and businesses were built to serve this small yet powerful community of Westerners in one of China's largest cities. The strange thing about this International Settlement was that China has been at war with Imperial Japan for several years, yet this island of Americans and Europeans exists relatively untouched by the war.

Pearl Harbor, of course, changes that, and on December 8, 1941, Japanese forces cross into the International Settlement, wrecking young Jamie's structured life of private school and a comfortable life with Mum and Dad. Separated from his parents in a particularly heart-wrenching scene, Jamie undergoes a hellish ordeal as he attempts to survive on his own.

Screenwriter Stoppard adapts Ballard's novel quite faithfully, and Spielberg's directorial talents carry us along Jamie's journey from the streets of Shanghai to the confines of a Japanese internment camp for civilian prisoners.

Jim: [during an American airstrike] P-51! Cadillac of the sky!

Although Empire of the Sun is not a combat film, there are a few battle scenes that give us glimpses of the wider war. The December 1941 sequence is terrifying and technically challenging, while the Kamikaze Dawn scene is awe-inspiring yet tragic

In this amazingly beautiful scene, Jamie - who admires Japanese pilots and their planes - watches a pre-takeoff ceremony for a trio of kamikaze (suicide) pilots. In a solemn gesture of respect, this young British boy sings "Suo Gan" across the barbed wire that separates the internment camp from the Japanese airfield. At first surprised, the Japanese commander listens to this unlikely show of admiration, then watches his three planes take off into the morning sun...where they are immediately jumped by a squadron of American P-51 Mustangs.

The cast includes John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson and Nigel Havers. Allen Daviau's cinematography, Michael Kahn's flawless editing, and John Williams' moving score contribute to the quality of this film, which was the first American production to be filmed in the People's Republic of China.

My Viewpoint:  I missed seeing this one in theaters because I was in college at the time and was saving up for my Semester in Spain trip in 1988, and in any case no one wanted to go see a "depressing" Spielberg film with me.  I ended up buying the soundtrack album (on cassette) and a Spanish-language translation of the novel while I was in Seville, Thus by the time I first saw it on the VHS tape edition, I knew the basics of the plot and had heard the score.

To be sure, if you aren't into war movies or very serious dramas, this movie isn't for you.  It's one of the rare "war movies" that goes beyond the usual battle narrative with soldiers, sailors, Marines and air men and looks at the effects of war on civilians, especially on kids.

However, this film is notable because it marks the film debut of Christian Bale, who is perhaps now known to moviegoers as Christopher Nolan's 21st Century incarnation of Batman and McG's John Connor in Terminator 4: Salvation.  Here he's extremely young, but he carries the movie with the maturity and talent that he needs to portray young Jamie Graham at a time where he loses his childhood innocence,

I recommend Empire of the Sun not only because I'm a big World War II buff or because I like most of Spielberg's movies; those reasons are factors, but I think the film's technical attributes and the high quality of the cast, screenplay and acting make it worthwhile.

Jim: Would you like a Hershey bar?
Nina: Oh yes, please
Jim: So would I kid, have you got one?