Empire of the Sun (1987)

Awesome Movie

An Exercise In Nonsense

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Awesome in all aspect! This movie is a piece of art! ... showing through Jim's eyes the war!

If it weren't for The Last Emperor, which is also one of the greatest films I've ever seen, this one would have won the Oscars for which it was nominated for 1988. Everything about it is first rate. The story, the cinematography, the sound, the music, and Christian Bale. Maybe my favorite part is really the music. John Williams is such a genius! The "Cadillac of the Skies" theme is escapism come true. This young boy comes to manhood in the most confusing of circumstances and his toy airplane is his last contact with his innocent and protected childhood. It is also his hero, his deliverer, his champion. The music tells this story. Some of the scenes haunt me, perhaps most especially the reunion with his parents. They find their boy, who looks like a man, and his reaction, for me as a mother, is jarring, but probably very accurate.

While Japan is conquering China, foreigners live in the Shanghai International Settlement oblivious to the suffering. Jamie Graham (Christian Bale) is a spoiled British upper class schoolboy. In the chaos of the Japanese taking Shanghai, Jamie's parents lose him in the crowd. He goes home to find his servants stealing the valuables. He is found by Basie (John Malkovich) and Frank Demarest (Joe Pantoliano) who are also stranded in Shanghai. He is taken to an assembly center along with Basie who teaches him how to survive. In the camp, Jamie lives with the Victors.Spielberg is a master of a child's wonderment. That's what he does here. Despite the movie's subject matter, it never gets to be truly disturbing or ugly. He always pulls back a little earning its PG rating. Jamie can be an annoying spoiled brat. At times, he seems to be deliberately dense. Christian Bale does an amazing acting job. It is a wonderfully shot movie. Although it may not get the perfect sense of the reality.

A tough film about the cruelty of war and the death of innocence, "Empire Of The Sun" seems dedicated to a single point, that Stephen Spielberg can make a serious film. Unfortunately, "serious" is not the same as "good."It's December, 1941. Young Jamie Graham enjoys a life of privilege in western-controlled Shanghai, China. Those good times are about to end, thanks to the very same Japanese war machine Jamie idolizes. After the tanks roll in, he is separated from his parents and forced to fend for his own in a bleak landscape.Based on the real-life experiences of author J. G. Ballard, "Empire Of The Sun" is a story about human suffering above all. Another review here, more positive, describes it as "a small story told on a vast canvas," and that captures it for me, too. It's a painterly film, with vivid imagery abounding. In that way, Spielberg often channels the director originally slated to make this, David Lean. That said, I found myself thoroughly alienated from the people and situations involved.Christian Bale is a stunning actor, able at 12 to deliver the kind of performance as Jamie that raps you on the head like a two-by-four. But he's a handful. Either he's talking a mile a minute or staring off into space in some kind of feral transport. He's also really obnoxious and unlikable. This is noticed by some of the other characters, too."You're starting to get on my nerves," says an American scrounger he runs into in Shanghai, Frank (Joe Pantoliano)."Very difficult boy," is the verdict of Sgt. Nagata (Masatô Ibu), commander of the internment camp where Jamie is sent.My favorite is the response given by fellow prisoner Mrs. Victor (Miranda Richardson), when Jamie asks why the Japanese closed the schools: "To punish their parents."You have to find things to entertain you watching "Empire Of The Sun," since this is one time Spielberg won't do that for you. Like Jamie, or Jim as it becomes later, this is serious business all the way through, with starvation and disease gnawing at your elbows and hardly any hope in sight. Don't look for a bright light here; it just may be an atomic explosion."First one side feeds you, the other side tries to get you killed, then it's all turned around," Jim is told by his sometime buddy Basie (John Malkovich). "It's all timing."Malkovich is in great form, as movie-star ready as he ever looked on screen, and to solid effect, but I never got his purpose here. He doesn't bond with Jim, nor figure much in the outcome. No one does; Jim just wanders around until the scene shifts, after long languors, to something else. There's a desperate need here to trim, especially in the beginning and the end, but Spielberg and screenwriter Tom Stoppard are more concerned with Big Moment Cinema. We watch Jim serenade kamikaze pilots with a schoolboy chorale, and a minute later he's cheering their deaths at the top of his lungs, chanting "P-51! Cadillac of the skies!" If Spielberg can't engage you, he'll overwhelm you trying.Spielberg has gone on to make other serious movies, and to my mind, done so more successfully even if his tendency to overpush remains. You see moments here that remind you how good he is at scene-setting, but if I said I cared for five straight minutes watching "Empire Of The Sun," I'd be lying.