my favourite film

Rating: 10/10 (23 March 1999)

I first saw this film back in 1987 when my parents took me to the theatre. I was five at the time, but the movie was something that held me tightly and would not let go. I guess it was Jim living on his own that fascinated me. I've never been on my own, but I always wondered what it was like, I was a child, my life revolved around kindergarten and episodes of Mister Rodgers Neighborhood. When "Empire" premiered on HBO a year later, I had my older brother record it for me. I watched it everyday and wore out the VCR. Ten years later I saw the film again, not as a little kid, but as a fifteen year old girl planning to be a movie director when I grew up. I catapulted into the story and relived many childhood memories as Jim "ran around trying to find his parents,"(that what I always thought it was about for ten years), I read the novel by J. G. Ballard and found all the symbolism Mr. Spielberg had put into it. It has always been my favourite film and has been since '87, as I watch the movie(at least once a week now) I see the five year old little girl that I once was. Steven Spielberg took us into to the life of a young British boy in a Japanese interment camp outside of Shanghai, China. Jim meets Frank and Basie after being "lost in the crowd" and becomes a pickpocket for Basie's constant errands. Four years later, as the war winds down, Jim questions a lot of things in his reality and can't remember what his parents look like. He doesn't want to leave the camp, but he wants to find his parents. This movie is my favourite film(I bet you're sick of hearing that!) and it should have won all six Oscars it was nominated for and more(including Best Picture). It's a cinematic achievement, one of Spielberg's best, and will live forever in movie history if people will watch it and admire it story and characters.