Empire of the Sun movie review (1987)

The most agonizing moment in Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" comes near the beginning as the streets of Shanghai are filled with a panic-stricken mob and he is separated from his parents as they flee to sanctuary. One moment his mother has him by the hand, and the next moment he has dropped his toy airplane and stooped to pick it up and they are separated by 5,000 frightened people, never to see each other again until the war is over.

The boy is lost, left behind and finally placed in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. His story is based on the autobiographical novel by J. G. Ballard, who lived through a similar experience as an adolescent. But if Ballard had not written his novel Spielberg might have been forced to, because the story is so close to his heart. Not only do we have the familiar Spielberg theme of a child searching for his parents, but we also have the motif of the magic above reality - the escape mechanism into a more perfect world, a world that may be represented by visitors from another planet, or time travel, or hidden treasure. This time, it is the world of the air - and airplanes.

Life on Earth is not so enjoyable for the boy, whose name is Jim, and who is played by Christian Bale with a kind of grim poetry that suggests a young Tom Courtenay. There are no free passes for kids in the prison camp, and Jim soon finds a protector of sorts in Basie, an American prisoner played by John Malkovich with a laconic cynicism. Basie is a merchant seaman and born hustler, and his corner of the prison camp is a miraculous source for Hershey bars and other contraband (in his resourcefulness and capitalistic zeal, he's a reminder of the William Holden character in "Stalag 17"). Basie doesn't exactly play father to the kid; he permits him to exist in his sphere and to survive.

Jim is a quick learner. Short, fast and somewhat invisible because of his youth, he has the run of the camp. He knows all the shortcuts and all the scams and steals to survive. He also dreams of airplanes, and as the months go by, he dreams less frequently of his parents and finally cannot quite even remember their faces. Spielberg portrays the prison camp as another of those typically Hollywood enclosures where the jailers embody cruel authority while somehow permitting the heroes to raise hell and have a relatively good time. Like the adolescent in John Boorman's recent "Hope and Glory," Jim finds that young boys can even enjoy war, up to a point.

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