great film

Rating: Null/10 (16 March 2004)

With Empire of the Sun, Steven Spielberg transformed into cinema the dark vision of the world and its future of the novelist, J. G. Ballard. Of course credit should also be given to brilliant scriptwriter Tom Stoppard, but in this film, Spielberg presents a story of a traumatized British boy's shifting identity as "empires" shred, with power shifting from Britain in China to Japan, then to the nuclear terror "empire of the sun" of the newly-harnessed atomic weaponry of the United States. But by all three of its `authors,' this story of ideological shifting is as much about the world at war as about the boy Jim's separation from and longing for his parents -- to whom does this lost boy belong? Jim is struggling to know who he is, and how to function in a world where arbitrary and shifting power becomes the only absolute. Jim needs a nurturing mother and a legitimately authoritative father. The story of Empire is the story of Jim's struggling search, and our search with him, for a sense of belonging in a world where violent power has become absolute. The two words, "ideology" and "identity" share much common meaning. Because he is struggling to grow up -- coming of age -- at the same time as he is separated from his parents in war, Jim is struggling to find an identity. Ordinarily, one knows what is "the same" with one's own values by means of a symbol-system, or ideology. But Jim's values and emerging identity are bombarded by the collapse of such systems, and he must first struggle to survive, physically and spiritually. Through the eyes and the mind and heart of Jim, the novel's author, J. G. Ballard, presents an autobiographical narrative of his own experiences in Shanghai and Japanese internment camps in China. Ultimately, at the end of the film, it is questionable whether or not Jim has been able to integrate his experiences with suffering and death when we look into his empty, traumatized eyes. He is found by his parents, and is being embraced by his mother, but we do not know his future. In his young world of fantasy where might is right and beautiful, Jim dreams of airplanes -- symbols, fetishes and talismans, the ultimate incarnations of power. For Jim they are dreamlike, exalted objects of worship. Jim is a boy who is deeply enamored with the new technologies of war. His every day- and night-time dream is filled with visions of the newest warplanes and their dogfights and bombing raids. So, increasingly, he binds himself to the imagery of death technology in American media. He grows to love their violence. Jim's problem with his identity, with his sense of to whom and to what set of values he belongs, is represented to us with this fascination of his with airplanes. He tries to compensate his missing and lost family love with his love for planes and flying. In one scene when Jim and the displaced Europeans are brought into a camp to help build an airport runway, Jim sees a Japanese Zero being worked on in a hanger. He slowly approaches and lovingly caresses it while choral music builds, and a surreal background of soft lighting, light from welders' torches, smoke and golden sparks from grinders presents us with another seemingly supernatural scene. Three Japanese pilots approach the plane, and when Jim sees them, he slowly comes to reverent military attention, and he and the Japanese exchange salutes. Planes not only substitute for his parents. In one scene, when American planes bomb and strafe the airfield, Jim shouts hysterically, "I touched them! I felt their heat! I could taste them in my mouth! Oil and cordite!" We know that Jim is deprived of parents, and we also know of the importance of food symbols and the motif of starvation in the film. But this is the first time that Jim's seeking, and finding, of nurturing from the airplane is made explicit. His friend and, to some degree, father substitute, Dr. Ransome rushes up onto the roof where Jim is running and shouting crazily and tells him to "Get down!" and "Stop thinking so much!" Jim weeps, telling the doctor that he can't remember what his parents look like, then goes into a trance-like state, and chants his Latin lessons which he has been working on with Dr. Ransome, but with the words: "Amatus sum," I am loved. In the novel, Jim witnessed American planes shot down, and the pilots unable to eject, and burning alive in their seats. As with the kamikaze pilots, these pilots are just part of the weaponry machinery. They cannot separate. The order of this war-time structure means that even Jim himself also has no individual human worth apart from the military machine. Ideas of individual coherence or integrity have less and less meaning as the war, and Jim's experience of being lost within it, continue. "Despite everything, he knew he was worth nothing." The deaths of the pilots were "a premonition of his death, the sight of his soul joining the larger soul of the dying world." His cheerful American friends in the camp turn out in the end only to be other servants of death. When he learns of the new weapon, the atomic bomb, Jim knows that they also are not only destroyers of human bodies, but also of distinct, autonomous selfhood. Basie tells Jim that since he has seen the bomb, he might appear in Life. Up until the point of the dropping of the bomb and his experience of Mrs. Victor's ascent, all Jim's actions lead in the direction of fulfilling his obligations to death in war. Since only as an object of death can he be fully known and "loved", Jim is only perfected in his weakness and submission to the machinery of death. At the end of the war, after the atomic weapon has been used, has the fighting really ended? Jim becomes aware, with the killing of his kamikaze friend that he has entered a world where there could be no leaving behind the horror of war, where war has become total. In a scene reminiscent of the hospital attempted revival, an American has stupidly shot dead Jim's young kamikaze friend just as the Japanese boy had given Jim a mango and they were about to share it, providing Jim with a little of the nurturing he so desperately needs and desires. Jim is shocked and outraged by the stupid, wanton killing. The night before this attempted magical revival scene, Jim had just witnessed the explosion of the atomic bomb, immediately after a mother substitute, Mrs. Victor, had died in his arms. In that scene, Jim at first believed that the strange new light across the sky was Mrs. Victor's soul going to heaven. When Jim hears the report of the bomb on the radio, his identity is once again shattered. Jim now no longer worships the god of death and destruction, the airplane. He believes that he now possesses the power of the sun, and is an almighty healer. Believing his hands to possess supernatural powers after having witnessed the power of the sun, having seen the light from the explosion of the atomic bomb, Jim applies the same heart massage to the just-killed Japanese boy, while chanting, "I can bring them back. Everyone." As he moves forward and down massaging the chest of his shot friend, the light of the sun glares into the camera lens, then clears as Jim moves back up. This glare pattern, alternating with Jim, repeats many times. We then see a shot of the body Jim is giving the heart massage to, and it has become the younger schoolboy Jim who has been left behind years earlier. A few moments later, we see that it really is still the Japanese boy Jim is trying to revive, but blood oozes from his mouth with each press on his stopped heart. The young kamikaze pilot, with whom he shared model planes, and who protected him during his near-suicidal pheasant-hunt, in many ways represented Jim's confusing Japanese identity -- his double. But he is very dead. Although heavy, this is great, meaning potentially classic, film-making.