This Boy's Life

Rating: 6/10 (6 April 2007)

Just after Pearl Harbor the Japanese move into Shangai, separating Jim (Christian Bale) from his parents. After wandering around the city for a while he winds up in an internment camp, tutored by Fagin, I mean Basie (John Malkovitch), in the fine arts of theft, arrogating the advantages of the dead, swapping favors for fancy golf shoes, and so on. Basie doesn't really care as much about Jim as he does about survival and in the end has no qualms about deserting him and his best pal, Joe Pantoliano, without a word or, as far as we can tell, a second thought. When the atomic bomb demolishes two cities, the Japanese leave the camp. Jim wanders around a bit more before his parents finally locate him and take him away.
Now kids, before you get lost, this is World War II we're talking about here. The USA got into it in 1941 and it ended in 1945. Shanghai was on the coast of China and it was a very cosmopolitan city, and it's becoming one again. The Japanese fought on one side and the US, Britain, and China (more or less) fought against them. Now I hope you're paying attention because, if not, you will be punished by having to read a big fat book on Chinese history.
The performances are pretty good. Nice occasional use of Chopin, but John Williams' score tells us what to think and feel in no uncertain terms. In this respect it serves as an almost perfect complement to Steven Spielberg's effective and technically superb direction. Every shot of an airplane -- whether a home-made model or a P-51 -- is accompanied by a heavenly choir. So are celestial orbs. During moments that elicit sentiment we have a Welsh lullaby. The whole film is evocative and visually splendid.
It nicely joins art with artifice. Commercially it could be described as a "crossover" movie. There's nothing much in it to offend any of the ethnic groups it deals with. Yes, the aristocratic Brits are a little snobby and unfeeling. And the Americans are scoundrels. But those are projections from inside the social borders. Brits and Americans can take it from one of their own. The Chinese for the most part are anonymous, except that once in a while they slap the kid's face while stealing his piano or a street thug beats Jim while trying to pull off his shoes in an alley. (I guess if you're going to offend someone you might as well make it the Chinese.)
The Japanese are treated naturalistically. Some are friendlier and gentler than others but all of them show human emotions, even if the emotions are rage. We shouldn't be surprised that the Japanese at the internment camp whomp prisoners who defy their orders. My God, what they did to their own recruits at the Eta Navel Academy would make Parris Island look like Esalen. Japanese culture historically has been an odd blend of delicacy and cruelty, exemplified in the title of Ruth Benedict's "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword." The longest section has to do with the prison camp and it's a little confusing in its details although we get the general picture. Everything seems to depend on whether you can find those extra cigarettes or swipe an additional potato. Erving Goffman described this sort of "total institution" and its "small reward system" evocatively.
It's a big and generous film that spells "epic" with every frame. I don't know where it intended going though. There are some scenes that absolutely MUST have been lifted directly from Ballard's autobiographical novel. Footprints in the ashes that cover the bedroom floor. Jim, the central character, seems to have learned something. He begins as a superior snot, learns to survive while roughing it in a place where kids get no passes, and in the end comes full circle and goes home with his parents, presumably changed, in the sense of having discovered that, though survival comes first, there are boundaries beyond which behavior turns indecent.