Author: Pauline Kyle
Translator: Chen Sihang
Proofreading: Easy two three
Source: the new yorker (December 28, 1987)
Empire of the Sun opens with a grand opening, but it only lasts about 45 minutes. This "majestic" looks so gorgeous that it even makes you want to laugh. Steven Spielberg took over Shanghai and made it his own city. It was crowded with people, and as the camera moved from the top of the stately building to the street below, everyone was following his orders.
Empire of the Sun (1987)
Then, his director went terribly wrong. At first, only a small fragment went wrong, and then the scope gradually expanded. His work has an astonishing scale and grand themes. He immersed himself in the ornate passages and then wandered into them. He tries to present a poetic sense of indulgence that loses his grasp of the narrative. He wanted emotion—wanted to say something, to give the picture some meaning—and he injected false emotions. This is what he calls poetry.
At the outbreak of World War II, an eleven-year-old English boy in Shanghai, Jim (Christian Bell), is separated from his parents. He used to go to school in a chauffeur-driven Packard, but on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese invaded the city, he was also involved in this massive evacuation. He survived hunger and disease and spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camp.
He withdrew from the camp, was forced to march, and starved in the countryside. At this time, the United States airdropped some supplies, and he got some canned pork and other things. A few days later, he was in a barracks, only to have another airdrop—a jar hanging from a parachute that shattered the crumbling ceiling. It hovered in the air like a colorful holiday gift, and food tilted down like raindrops, accompanied by a series of flickering dots of light. If Spielberg were just in charge of pork, just ignore the magic dust!
Jim started flying a model airplane while he was still living in a Tudor-style apartment in the British consular district. When he saw the Japanese Zero, the American P-51 Mustang, and all the others, there was reverence in his eyes. Spielberg used this as an excuse to glorify every flight.
A toy glider magically turns in the air, and an exploding Zero fighter ignites an aura-like flame. Jim's trapped camp is next to an air base. As he approached a Japanese plane and stroked it, the chorus in the soundtrack raised its volume, and he looked like a boy who had just found God.
Not only is this challenging your taste, it's also going against your reason, and it shakes your confidence in the film. We saw it all through the boy's astonished eyes, but it was Spielberg who uttered the words, "Oh, look!" He shows a boring sense of mystery. (He tries to give you a miracle every ten minutes.) Jim forged a friendship with a Japanese boy — a smiling, teenage pilot from an air base — filled with thick, sticky kindness. Every time we see this "airplane brotherhood," the film's narrative seems to be going backwards.
In the opening, we can see a shocking effect, which seems to be a one-off joke: Jim is overlooking the harbor from the height of a hotel, and he sees a ship flashing a signal. Jim was a smart kid who knew Morse code, so he responded.
Immediately, with a "bang", the hotel was shelled. It was as if he had caused it, or even deliberately done it. The scene isn't very tense, but it presents a resonance: we're aware of the gap between children's play and adult behavior, and the ways in which that gap is bridged in wartime. Jim was forced to grow up in a brutal environment. Spielberg tries to use the magic of cinema to make these brutal environments beautiful—mythical. He believes that he can achieve this goal by simply putting a veil on the event.
Spielberg's work is derived from j.g. Ballard's autobiographical novel, and the screenplay was written thanks to Tom Storpad (but Menno Maijgers was also involved), but he did not clarify exactly what happened. The evil American merchant mariner Bessie (John Markovich) and his cronies Frank (Joe Pantoriano) try to sell Jim to a Chinese businessman, but the scene is quickly skipped.
In a prisoner-of-war camp, you might find be a bit dark and cruel about the way Bessie — a control freak, an instigator — teaches Jim survival skills, but you'll have a hard time catching the dirty side. So, it's a dirty thing that's hard to imagine. You must think that Mrs. Victor (Miranda Richardson) must have something you don't know, that is, a cold, snobbish English woman, and Jim sleeps near her bed. Spielberg seems to want to do everything "well," and, like Purple, there must be something "bad" in the raw material.
In fact, Ballard's book is like a boy's adventure, as he tries to get back to the innocent child and observe the way he gradually becomes distorted. Ballard's narrative is reminiscent of the disturbing texture of The Painted Bird. Spielberg's narrative is bland, which runs counter to this theme. If he's going to make something sweet, how does he create an epic? It was the process of a child's soul being frozen, the creepy experience of war.
The Painted Bird (2019)
This is "yellow". Spielberg sees the hell of a prisoner-of-war camp as the backdrop to a coming-of-age story— the rich man Jim learns on his own to cheat money and steal from corpses, which eventually makes him a man. After watching the movie, you're blankly asking, "What the hell is going on?"
The boy is a good actor and the director's direction is also excellent. I was deeply impressed by a scene in which Jim chased the truck leaving the detention center, where Bessie and the other prisoners were sitting. The fanatical Jim chatters as he tries to get Bessie's attention, but Bessie deliberately ignores him and instead talks to the other two smaller kids in the truck.
This is probably the best dramatic scene in the film, and we see Jim's fear that he could lose his only protector. We also think of Jim's unethical behavior. (He got into the truck and claimed he could show the way to a Japanese driver who didn't know how to get there.) In a hysterical way, Jim rushes to run errands for everyone in the camp in exchange for a chance to survive.
In moments like these, he becomes attractive: we can understand his thoughts about wanting to stay alive. We also understand Spielberg's fanaticism. His crowd poured into the streets of Shanghai, trying to leave the city by seashore and roads. As the tanks rushed toward them, he also presented the congestion of the streets.
This spectacular scene is beyond any movie scheduling you've ever seen —whether it's five thousand, ten thousand, or fifteen thousand. While this scene overwhelms the story, its profligacy also creates a shameless joy: this is the dream of a film director. These images offer their own views on the countercurrent of war.
But, under normal circumstances, Spielberg doesn't seem to know what effect he's after. Once wealthy prisoners embarked on a journey of death, they came to a stadium filled with expropriations, filled with chandeliers, limousines, grand pianos, paintings and sculptures. The number of these items is reminiscent of the large number of items piled up in boxes and crates in Citizen Kane.
But what exactly does this picture mean? Are the rich in Shanghai too rich? Did they find salvation in their suffering? The Japanese wasted these precious things in the open air? Or is it something else entirely? Maybe the privileged life of yesteryear is just an illusion? What we see is loose and graceful surrealism. A woman sat down in front of one of the pianos, and then we heard the ruined music of the proud house. Onlookers whispered that the piano was in tune and then giggled. Audiences struggle to fill the vacuum as they watch one aimless scene after another.
After his parents were separated, Jim returned to the almost abandoned house. Talc powder and boot prints still exist on the floor of his mother's room, as well as bare footprints and handprints. Spielberg was holding the camera on the messy ground, and he spent so long that he even made us think we were stupid.
We can't understand whether this is a dream of rape, blasphemy, or a real imprint. (Who is this picture related to?) He was obsessed with the image itself. He pointed his camera at Jim, and he was alone in the house doing forbidden things — eating chocolate with liqueur fillings, riding a bike on a parquet floor — and then wandering aimlessly in circles.
Later, he also took an oil-like image of three kamikaze members preparing to take off from the air base, and he paid tribute to their heroic deeds. The movie can be summed up in one sentence: "Oh, look at it!" It was an otherworldly emotion, and he needed more than just the boy's role. (It's structured exactly like Spielberg's animated film American Rattan.) In this work, a little mouse is separated from its parents and undergoes a terrible adventure, eventually reunited with the mother rat and the father of the mouse. ）
Technically, Empire of the Sun has achieved quite a grand achievement. Spielberg, who could only shoot in Shanghai for three weeks, matched and built his own sets in Spain and London. However, the film is not only about craftsmanship, it is also mixed with incredibly low-level fun.
Every time Spielberg tried to make a humanitarian statement, he failed —his statement was naïve, and it all ran counter to the context of Ballard's original work. (In effect, the work provides Jim with a glimpse of moral consciousness: He decides he no longer wants to be friends with Bessie.) Spielberg was trapped by his moments of pride. That's exactly what John Williams does: his editorial-like music, which fluctuates over the hours of the film, tries to give us a sense of religion. It is the gelatinous composition of music, covered in candy-like images.