Steven Spielberg grows up

Rating: 8/10 (15 November 2010)

From the first glimpse of open caskets floating down the Yangtze River to the final image of the young hero's childhood baggage drifting away on the tide, it's clear Steven Spielberg is trying to challenge both himself and his audience, with a daring (for this director) adaptation of J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel. For the most part he succeeds admirably, harnessing his state-of-the-art talents to an allegorical wartime fantasy (written from firsthand experience) about a young British boy in Shanghai, separated from his parents after the Japanese invasion and thrust into the alleys and gutters of an alien world, ending the war in a civilian internment camp. But this is no typical coming-of-age drama; in wartime the end of innocence often brings madness, not maturity, and Spielberg doesn't compromise the material with the expected blockbuster flourishes (as he did in 'The Color Purple'). Despite the director's distracting emphasis on flashy visual exposition, his film nevertheless makes demands on its audience that they may not be prepared to meet: fans of 'Indiana Jones' and 'ET' really can't be expected to shoulder the burden of so much arcane symbolism and haunting, dreamlike imagery. If for nothing else Spielberg deserves credit for taking a risk on such an uncommercial property.