Empire of the Sun
1987 Directed by Steven Spielberg
Synopsis
To survive in a world at war, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.
The novel recounts the story of a young English boy, Jim Graham, who lives with his parents in Shanghai. After the Pearl Harbour attack, the Japanese occupy the Shanghai International Settlement, and in the following chaos Jim becomes separated from his parents.
Popular reviews
More-
The ending took it up a big notch. Caught me off guard is what happened.
Technically the film is fantastic. Spielberg knows his stuff. The story is a little bit all over the place but Bale really holds it all together. It truly is a great performance. Some other characters do feel underused though. The film tries to rely on Miranda Richardson's character for a couple of emotionally heavy scenes but I felt that she had not been present enough throughout the film to warrant this.
Gotta love the choir singing though.
-
It seems an odd pairing: Steven Spielberg and his films of emotional warmth and yearning, and JG Ballard, author of detached, forensic examinations of violence. Yet it's easy to see what attracted Spielberg to Ballard's autobiographical novel, as it covers some of the themes he returns to many times over: childhood and family; parental abandonment and a child's adventure; escape and flight as a symbol of transcending ones troubles.
Moreover, Empire of the Sun is about the death of innocence; a boy whose experiences during the Second World War form him into an adult. It's a significant film in Spielberg's body of work as it marks an attempt to shift away from what had been his celebration of the child… -
Empire of the Sun is a story about a british boy surviving in a japanese occupied Shangai.
The movie is really beautiful, with really great sceneries and shots. There are some really magical moments, for example when Jim is singing for the three kamikaze.
The acting is really great and what I like about this movie is that infantile feeling as we follow Jim around. Yes, he was a brat and of course those war situations would change him, mature him, but I love how we can watch him still being a kid or befriending a japanese kid, ignoring the hatred of the war. I just didn't like much the way he glamourize the Atom Bomb, but I guess it was his naive way to see it.
This is really a great movie.
-
Wow, Batman was tiny.
It's freaky just looking at him.
-
69/100
Gets pretty Spielberg-y at times—he still hadn't learned to distrust his populist instincts in a purely dramatic context—but the first hour or so, prior to the internment camp, is remarkably strong, not least in its depiction of Jamie as a budding young opportunist who encounters his disreputable future in Basie. (Malkovich gets one of the all-time great entrances here: head down, cap pulled low, just a torrent of wised-up speech; it's ages before we get a good look at his eyes. He'd already won critics' awards a couple years earlier for Killing Fields and Places in the Heart, but this was the role that defined him for me.) Really, you could repair a lot of the damage just by…
-
-Part of my on-going Spielberg marathon-
First off, I was genuinely BLOWN away by Christian Bale in this film. It’s a true testament to what he can and have achieved in his career decades later thus far. Memorable roles (‘The Machinist’ comes to mind), his methodic acting that has receives strings of recognition, infamously known for his hot-headed temper, being the Batman to Nolan’s Dark Knight, and on and such and such…but this film clearly his stepping stone and what a great role it is. It’s not supremely easy to truly embody Jamie/‘Jim’, a young boy whose world are trapped in one of the most ferocious and indeed, a bleak time in human history, the Pacific War. But he nails…
Recent reviews
More-
Amazing, one of Stephen Spielberg's best. All the actors are great, really not any flaws.
-
Empire of the Sun is a story about a british boy surviving in a japanese occupied Shangai.
The movie is really beautiful, with really great sceneries and shots. There are some really magical moments, for example when Jim is singing for the three kamikaze.
The acting is really great and what I like about this movie is that infantile feeling as we follow Jim around. Yes, he was a brat and of course those war situations would change him, mature him, but I love how we can watch him still being a kid or befriending a japanese kid, ignoring the hatred of the war. I just didn't like much the way he glamourize the Atom Bomb, but I guess it was his naive way to see it.
This is really a great movie.
-
A particular mood but what kind, exactly? The strange pull of machines and man-made structures. Empty swimming pools, abandoned resorts, deteriorating airfields and military installations, the blackened and bubbling exterior of a space capsule returned home thanks to a decayed orbit, disintegrating and in turn revealing a deeper meaning shorn of any instrumental content. Part of the strangeness comes from the fact that there's a mystery as to the source of that meaning. We didn't put it there, but since it's artificial and occupies a stratum between the man-made world and the bare facts of the physical world, nature didn't either. But it seems to be there, seems to follow a set of cryptic generative laws that engender a hidden…
-
Final film for the Adapted April challenge.
I had first heard of Empire of the Sun in an interview that Christian Bale had given and of how scared he was on set with Steven Spielberg at such a young age.
The film tells a great tale that mixes a coming of age story with the loss of innocence during testing times. Christian Bale gives a great performance and as the film is based on an autobiographical account of JG Ballard himself, Ballard himself endorsed Bales's performance and his likeness to him.
From what little I have read of JG Ballard and his work and from some other films adapted from them, Empire of the Sun is completely different from the rest and one unique piece of work in his bibliography, that has been brought onto the screen well.
-
japan
-
I expected the sentimentality. What I didn't expect was for it to be such a drag.
-
Although being of the less known Spielberg films, this is a great film. Good story, focused on a "forgotten" side of the WWII. Christian Bale's perfomance is stunning and really stands out in this film. Technically and visually perfect. However, it's not as touching or powerful as Schindler's List and I felt it was too long, with some unnecessary scenes. Anyway, even with some problems, this film is underrated and deserves to be more known and valued.
-
I cant write a long review for this. I dont seem to have the correct words. This is what I can muster...
Visually stunning.
Acting great.
I didnt enjoy it.
Am I supposed to enjoy it?
Understand why people talk about it.
It's not a film for me.
Christian Bale has hardly aged.
It's really not a film for me.
Well made and acted though....That's all I have...
-
-Part of my on-going Spielberg marathon-
First off, I was genuinely BLOWN away by Christian Bale in this film. It’s a true testament to what he can and have achieved in his career decades later thus far. Memorable roles (‘The Machinist’ comes to mind), his methodic acting that has receives strings of recognition, infamously known for his hot-headed temper, being the Batman to Nolan’s Dark Knight, and on and such and such…but this film clearly his stepping stone and what a great role it is. It’s not supremely easy to truly embody Jamie/‘Jim’, a young boy whose world are trapped in one of the most ferocious and indeed, a bleak time in human history, the Pacific War. But he nails…