EMPIRE OF THE SUN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Live a lifetime of experience in a
short two and a half hours of film. A constantly inventive
film conveys a sense of wonder about flight and a whole lot
more. This is how to make a historical film. Rating: +4.
Every once in a while I *do* give a film a +4.
EMPIRE OF THE SUN is J. G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel recounting his experiences as a boy in China during the Japanese occupation in World War II. Tom Stoppard has adapted it for the screen and Steven Spielberg proves to have the talent of a Kubrick in directing the film. Spielberg does things nearly impossible in film. He has combined a spectacular with a highly personal film, even mixing them in the same scene. The scene in which Jim gets separated from his parents in a veritable ocean of fleeing humanity is both emotionally moving and immense. This is a film filled with one strange and vivid incident after another, one memorable scene after another, yet one never feels there is too much frosting and not enough cake. This film proves that somewhere underneath the highly commercial director is a man of great artistic talents that all too rarely get used. It is incomprehensible that the director of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM also directed a film of the sensitivity of EMPIRE OF THE SUN.
Jim (played by Christian Bale) is a boy with a very believable obsession: flight and airplanes. It is easy for me to believe this obsession with flying would strike a responsive chord in Spielberg; I know it does in me. His father became wealthy in the textile industry in Shanghai in a European community incongruously identical to one that one might find in Britain. Jim has led a sheltered life. His big concern is building airplane models and studying aircraft. His ambition is to join the Japanese military, not for political reasons, but because they have planes. Jim's simple existence is about to come to an end. The Japanese Imperial forces are about to seize Shanghai and Jim will have to fight to stay alive.
This story could have been told prosaically, but there is little prosaic about EMPIRE OF THE SUN. With Ballard's, Stoppard's, and Spielberg's imaginations creating images there is nothing stereotypic about this film. It is amazing that such a story could be told of conflict and suffering, and yet there is not a single villain and every character who speaks is fresh and new. There is a sense-of-wonder observation of the Japanese--bringers of planes to China--and of the Americans who build the huge "Cadillacs of the sky."
Just as HOPE AND GLORY--a comparable but less fully realized autobiographical film--gave us insights into the roots of John Boorman's love of fantasy, EMPIRE OF THE SUN more than explains why Ballard writes science-fictional mega-disaster novels in which we see how titanic, world- crushing events affect common people's lives. Perhaps the only thing that cuts against the credibility is that it is difficult to believe so many beautiful and enigmatic incidents could have happened to one boy.
EMPIRE OF THE SUN also demonstrates that Spielberg is an intelligent businessman. Apparently he had only three weeks to film in China. But he took much better advantage of that time than Bertolucci took of a much longer time in filming THE LAST EMPEROR. In China the price of an extra is something like a dollar a day. Bertolucci uses this advantage in perhaps one or two scenes--notably Pu Yi's coronation as seen from above. But Spielberg puts us in the middle of an ocean of panicking humanity as Shanghai is evacuated. Bertolucci tells us about history; Spielberg makes it happen to us. Bertolucci distances us from his characters; Spielberg puts us inside his.
This is the best film I have seen this year. Perhaps the best in several years.
Mark R. Leeper
ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu
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