Empire of the Sun Review

[alobear]

Empire of the Sun has been on my list for a long time, and it's even taken me quite a while to get round to watching it since it arrived in the post.

Christian Bale is very impressive at age 13, John Malkovich is always good value for money, and it was nice to see Nigel Havers in something as I had rather a thing for him when I was younger. Spielberg certainly knows how to paint an emotive picture, and he managed to make me cry. It's instinctive rather than expository, but that makes it all the more powerful.

A lot of it was quite confusing but, as a child's-eye view of the war, it was probably supposed to be. It took a long time to get going but, ultimately, the slow setup made the main character arc much more powerful. The unfolding of Jim's progression from a precocious and selfish eleven-year-old to an independent but war-scarred fourteen-year-old was masterfully done. The image that stays in my mind is when the body of the Japanese soldier he is trying to resuscitate towards the end turns briefly into a vision of his younger self. The implication there is that his childhood is irrevocably dead, but the ending offers up some semblance of hope for his future.

All in all, well worth the wait.


On a separate note, the latest thing my fickle yet obsessive nature has got itself addicted to is Neil Gaiman's online journal. I've grown extremely fond of him over the last couple of days, as I've been devouring the archives - he presents himself as very accessible and down-to-earth, with a healthy appreciation of where his genius has brought him and a wonderful sense of humour about the world.

Comments

[alobear.livejournal.com]

The ending wasn't what I'd been expecting, but it avoided being unrealistically soppy. I thought the length of time it took him to recognise his mother and the ending close-up on his very expressive eyes were extremely well done, and indicative of the fact that things weren't just going to go back to the way they were before.

Why are your feelings about it conflicted?