Empire of the Sun

An amazingly portrayed real story told from a child’s perspective, which is hurt a little by its excessive runtime and having too many endings. But every scene is so masterfully put together and each of those endings are so emotionally strong and semantically different (which is important), that there’s nothing to complain about. It should be swimming in Oscars, at least for he music and the cinematography. (17/01/2021)

A very romantic take on a Japanese internment camp, which made me regularly suspect several times during the film whether this was the protagonist's fever dream. With The Color Purple, for the first time, you could see the problem of a director's hysterical reverence when depicting major themes, which dilutes the viewing experience. Empire of the Sun presents another of his problems, namely the need to use his directorial skills to highlight traumatic moments in history, but without traumatizing the viewer. This aspect of his personality stems from the fact that as a filmmaker he takes on an exaggerated responsibility for his works, so while he wants us to be aware of the oppression and suffering depicted, he doesn't want to present it to us and instead tries to simulate the importance of the events through the enormity of the film. And he succeeds spectacularly indeed. The air raid on the airport is absolutely breathtaking. (08/12/2021)

Steven Spielberg is not my favorite director and this movie didn't change that. I hadn't seen it before now. And I must appreciate how excellently they managed to capture the time period and setting. Spielberg has a gift for that, as well as for building a story. This time it's even darker than usual, but it still didn't captivate me. But Christian Bale already showcased his talents back then. (05/12/2015)

Confirmed: This movie moves me every time. My fascination with airplanes (the "Cadillac of the skies" scene always gives me the chills, and the imaginary air battle in the crashed plane is absolutely perfect) is certainly responsible for the tremendous experience that Empire of the Sun gives me every time.... etc.), but the biggest contributors are still Spielberg's precision, Williams' score and Bale and Malkovich. Few films are as suited to the adjective "beautiful" as this one. (14/03/2011)

An adaptation of the autobiographical book by J. G. Ballard was something I had been looking forward to for a long time. It has an interesting theme and a great cast (Christian Bale, Miranda Richardson, John Malkovich). Empire of the Sun may also remind us of The Lover by Marguerite Duras in its broad scope, but like other Spielberg retro films, I'm afraid it has become dated. This amounts to an interesting trip into the cinema of the 1980s. Young Bale was already incredibly talented back then, but for a deeper experience, you would need to see the film back then. (01/02/2020)