Painful Coming-of-Age Story

Rating: 3/10 (16 June 2015)

A tough film about the cruelty of war and the death of innocence, "Empire Of The Sun" seems dedicated to a single point, that Stephen Spielberg can make a serious film. Unfortunately, "serious" is not the same as "good."
It's December, 1941. Young Jamie Graham enjoys a life of privilege in western-controlled Shanghai, China. Those good times are about to end, thanks to the very same Japanese war machine Jamie idolizes. After the tanks roll in, he is separated from his parents and forced to fend for his own in a bleak landscape.
Based on the real-life experiences of author J. G. Ballard, "Empire Of The Sun" is a story about human suffering above all. Another review here, more positive, describes it as "a small story told on a vast canvas," and that captures it for me, too. It's a painterly film, with vivid imagery abounding. In that way, Spielberg often channels the director originally slated to make this, David Lean. That said, I found myself thoroughly alienated from the people and situations involved.
Christian Bale is a stunning actor, able at 12 to deliver the kind of performance as Jamie that raps you on the head like a two-by-four. But he's a handful. Either he's talking a mile a minute or staring off into space in some kind of feral transport. He's also really obnoxious and unlikable. This is noticed by some of the other characters, too.
"You're starting to get on my nerves," says an American scrounger he runs into in Shanghai, Frank (Joe Pantoliano).
"Very difficult boy," is the verdict of Sgt. Nagata (MasatÃ´ Ibu), commander of the internment camp where Jamie is sent.
My favorite is the response given by fellow prisoner Mrs. Victor (Miranda Richardson), when Jamie asks why the Japanese closed the schools: "To punish their parents."
You have to find things to entertain you watching "Empire Of The Sun," since this is one time Spielberg won't do that for you. Like Jamie, or Jim as it becomes later, this is serious business all the way through, with starvation and disease gnawing at your elbows and hardly any hope in sight. Don't look for a bright light here; it just may be an atomic explosion.
"First one side feeds you, the other side tries to get you killed, then it's all turned around," Jim is told by his sometime buddy Basie (John Malkovich). "It's all timing."
Malkovich is in great form, as movie-star ready as he ever looked on screen, and to solid effect, but I never got his purpose here. He doesn't bond with Jim, nor figure much in the outcome. No one does; Jim just wanders around until the scene shifts, after long languors, to something else.
There's a desperate need here to trim, especially in the beginning and the end, but Spielberg and screenwriter Tom Stoppard are more concerned with Big Moment Cinema. We watch Jim serenade kamikaze pilots with a schoolboy chorale, and a minute later he's cheering their deaths at the top of his lungs, chanting "P-51! Cadillac of the skies!" If Spielberg can't engage you, he'll overwhelm you trying.
Spielberg has gone on to make other serious movies, and to my mind, done so more successfully even if his tendency to overpush remains. You see moments here that remind you how good he is at scene-setting, but if I said I cared for five straight minutes watching "Empire Of The Sun," I'd be lying.