More Than Meets the Lazy Eye

Rating: Null/10 (16 September 1998)

The problem with Empire of the Sun is that it *was - is - will always be* completely misunderstood.
Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Stoppard and based on J.G. Ballard's award-winning semi-autobipographical account of his adolescence in a Japanese internment camp, the entire film is a treatise on the human gifts for self-delusion and denial in the face of an overwhelming reality. In the film, character after character fights to avoid their grim circumstances by retreating into their inner world - they feverishly hang on to their previous lives and dreams, and only the characters who shuck off that treasured skin survive the new world created in the wake of World War II.
One of the chief misunderstandings of Empire of the Sun is the visual strategy Spielberg employs throughout the film in service to his theme. Time and again, his camera shows us scenes and shots that aren't actually happening in the 'real' world - Situations are seen as they are perceived or as they have been re-imagined in the memory of the film's twelve-year -old protagonist, Jim Graham (an astonishing Christian Bale). Jim is a pampered child of privelege given to flights of fantasy as the film opens - by its end, he will have all of those predilictions towards childhood dreams beaten out of him. By the end credit scrawl, he is the ultimate pragmatist, his collection of childhood memorabilia literally floating alongside the dead in the Shanghai Harbor.
As is unusual for a Spielberg film, the film's narrative events all support the central idea, instead of the ideas supporting a headlong narrative. Empire of the Sun is unique in the Spielberg canon in that its plot is secondary to the main dramatic action. Those expecting the normal Spielberg gift of A-Z storytelling were confused by a film that was less interested in story than it was on symbolism, allusions, ideas - many of these presented in throaways and visual gimmicks that went completely unnoticed.
Here is an example of the enormous texture of the film -- just one of the little unnoticed treasures in the movie that Spielberg pulls out like so much pocket lint -- early in the film, Jim's parents put him to bed, and Spielberg's editor Michael Kahn does a quick dissolve of the same image on top of itself. At first, it seems like a bizarre technical goof - only later when Jim makes the revelation that he has idealized his parents so much that he can't remember what they actually look like -- only then does the image zing home: A painting by Norman Rockwell from Life magazine hangs next to Jim's makeshift prison bed - This painting is the exact same image of parent and child from the beginning of the film.
All of this serves to subtly illustrate that the line between reality and remembered reality has been blurred by the War and the characters' need to escape.
Unfortuantely for Spielberg, his brilliant technique was taken at face value - his startegy was so complex, so smart, that it sailed completely over the heads of people not used to doing analytical thinking when watching a film with the moniker "Spielberg" attatched. This wasn't "E.T.", and it left people baffled. Eevn some scenes that clearly are Jim's fantasies were taken as "real" -- such as a pilot waving a salute to Jim, or a refrigerator spilling open, revealing a treasure of glitter and toys. But critics completely missed the boat, and chided Spielberg for his "fakery ".
The problem with works like "Empire of the Sun" is the tendency to reduce the film's moments into a sort of intellectual parlor game. The film's many many asides certainly don't discourage this (one quick throaway shows the British prisoners performing a reading from Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night 's Dream"), but when a film is somewhat dependent on the symbolic asides to relate its message, and the audience misses the boat, you have to rely only on your story to satisfy them. Time and again, this is what critics complained about - the films less-than-urgent third act.
For over a decade now, "Empire of the Sun" has languished in some sort of filmic netherworld, referenced only as some sort of prep course for Spielberg to get up for "Schindler's List", "Amistad", and "Saving Private Ryan". It is my opinion that the failure of this film - one labored and planned over so meticulously - was a giant blow to Spielberg. The incredible success of the uninspired "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" must have been equally disheartening.
In all, for those of you who have been quick to write off "Empire of the Sun " as Floppus Spielbergus, I say to take a second look, except this time, take the moments to ask yourself what the film is really about, and then notice all the work being done by Spielberg and Stoppard to sell you on that idea. It is a rapturous, wondrous piece of filmmaking -- one so beautiful there are moments that actually hurt to watch.
If you don't expect "Raiders of the Lost Prison Camp", I think you'll find much to reward you.