In 1987, in between Indiana Jones adventures at the Temple of Doom and his Last Crusade, Steven Spielberg directed one of his best dramatic films with the WW2 drama EMPIRE OF THE SUN.
Set in Shanghai in 1941, we see an English world within China, with a near perfect recreation of England society plopped down in the middle of Shanghai. Young Jim Graham is the son of a diplomat, living a privileged life with little intrusion from the squalor of China.
That all changes on December 8th, the day after Pearl Harbor, when the Chinese invade the city and Jim is separated from his parents.
Jim is played by a very young Christian Bale, who would grow up to play The Dark Knight and become one of our best actors. He’s terrific here, cloyingly spoiled as the film starts but soon broken by his harsh existence on his own in a war torn country.
The scenes shortly after the invasion are fascinating, with Jim wandering the streets and returning to his neighborhood in search of his Mom and Dad, along with any sense of his previous life.
Eventually captured, he is placed alongside many of his neighbors in the Soo Chow confinement camp, right next to a Chinese airfield. Jim’s passion from the film’s opening moments is airplanes and flight and he’s fascinated as he stands at the edge of the runway’s to watch fighters in action. He observes the traditions of the pilots with respect and reverence, earning their respect as well.
Trying to carve out some sense of purpose, Jim falls in with the some clever men who seem to always know how to provide anything within the walls of the camp. Basie (John Malkovich), Frank (Joe Pantoliano) and Dainty (a teenage Ben Stiller) become Jim’s new family within the camp.
The film spans many months from the invasion to the eventual end of the war.
While the middle section of the film drags a bit, it’s redeemed by one of Spielberg’s all-time great action sequences, the liberation of the prisoner camp. American fighters zoom out of the sky, exploding the airfield and Japanese planes in massive, full-scale explosions and flight sequences.
As John Williams’s music soars at full pitch, American fighter pilots maneuver their planes seemingly within mere fit of Jim, waving at him in slow motion as he screams with joy. His happiness seems driven equally by his close encounter with the planes he loves, as it does by his impending freedom.
Later, when Jim witnesses the Nagasaki atomic bomb exploding from a great distance, it’s a jaw dropping moment, staged in silence and with a reverence that maybe only Spielberg as a modern day director can conjure so easily.
This is a moving, terrific film staged on a massive scale. The recreation of Shanghai pre and post war and the post war desolation is visually powerful and inspires awe more than once.
The film is based on the true-life story of JG Ballard, who appears very briefly in an early masquerade party scene. The characters name Jim Graham is the JG in Ballard’s real life name.
A box office disappointment on its release, the film grossed only $22 million against its $35 million budget. Maybe film goers weren’t quite ready for a more serious Spielberg yet. His most successful dramas would appear six years later with “Schindler’s List” and a decade later with his other wartime drama, “Saving Private Ryan”.
For me, EMPIRE OF THE SUN is one of Spielberg’s best, one of my all time top 100 and an A+.
Jim’s shouts of “Cadillac of the skies!!” are still echoing in my head.
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