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Empire of the sun
A boy living in china gets separated from his parent during the Japanese invasion and he must learn to grow up in these harsh circumstances and in the process loose his innocence as a child.
Its one of those early movies where Spielberg is trying to make a turn into dramatic work from blockbuster film making. Hie is getting lot of resistance from not just critics but also from the people that matter like studio executives and financiers. But since he made them a lot of money he was given leeway to make few of these dramatic movies. Color purple and empire of the sun are some of his earlier forays into dramatics. Color purple was a massive success in terms of Oscar nominations and it did fairly well at box office. Because world wide audience along with US are interested in knowing about black culture but the weird thing about it all is that the curious of audience stop there. Other races and cultures want a movie about black culture with black cast and that's all. They are not interested in seeing black actors in common man movies or movies where the focus of the character is not on their blackness. Its the same even now. Black Panther has its roots in its blackness. Its about the culture of black people and so people are interested in seeing it and most of the audience are kids who don't know any better. Denzel Washington and will smith are the only two actors who were able to transcend it but even they had to stick with switching between commercial entertainers and low-budget dramas. They are not allowed to makes ambitious movies that have something to say like Revenant or the martian. Lets see if that changes.
This movie has a huge budget for its time. With the lead as an unknown that's pretty ballsy. Something like ET has alien as its star. But here the movie rests on the shoulder of young christian bale. I thought he did an outstanding job. The character is that of a highly active kid who survives the concentration camps of war by merely doing what he had to to survive. Over the course of his stay he is exposed to all possible kinds of human experiences. He sees some stuff he is not supposed to see at his age. All this accelerates his mental growth rate. At his age he doesn't see an enemy as an enemy rather he sees them as humans. But the circumstances forces him to behave like an adult. The movie has few cheesy lines and scenes where a Japanese kid tries to cut a fruit with a knife while Bale is holding it but from afar it looks like he is about to kill Bale. So the people who knew Bale from concentration camp tries to help and protect him but he sees adults making such evil decisions to kill an innocent kid trying to help him. There is no other way but to describe this journey as loss of innocence. I don't think Bale was acting and rather he was reacting. He was coached by Spielberg on the set in the moment. Which I think is how lot of kids act. They just react and throw a tantrum or something. They can't and don't internalize scenes and emotions. But there is so much Bale's face is emoting at a given time that it almost feels like he is mentally there.
Speaking of Bale, this is one of his early collaborations on a movie and that happens to be with Spielberg. I hate to compare this to any of the later collaborations of Spielberg. The main reason for that is in Spielberg's early part of career the cinematic landscape was different. Movies can sell themselves on their themes. Jaws and ET were more or less family friendly creature features. They are PG versions of Alien/The thing/Predator. They are mild and accessible enough to make boatloads of money. He made Indiana Jones movies as well cashing off the stardom of Harrison Ford from Star wars. I am not saying its easy but there is a clear path for those movies to make money. Heck, even Fugitive made lot of money. But from late 90s and early 2000s on wards Spielberg started behaving more and more like a better version of studio director for hire than a director with a vision. He always had his laurels to fall back on in terms of legacy and pedigree but for the most part he started behaving like a director dependent on the star power of the movie stars for box office rather than his own name brand and the strength of the movie. He collaborated with Tom Cruise , Tom hanks and DiCaprio. All these are bonafide movie stars who can bring in at-least 300 millions $ on a movie as long as it is either epic in scale or entertaining enough. He managed to not work with cheap movie stars like Adam Sandler but nonetheless he became dependent on star power. So none of those collaborations felt like a director pursuing his vision and more like studios put together a cast and a movie for him to direct. It all felt so commercial and cheap. In the last decade I felt most of his movies to be extremely pumped with studio push and marketing. Studios tried to push his movies way too hard to get some kind of recognition they never deserved. Even he is too scared to play it risky. All of them are just him playing it safe critically and financially. He lost his mojo. So to me collaboration in this movie always feels like classic Spielberg pursuing his vision and not forced by studios to cast someone because he is a movie-star. The collaboration between Christian Bale and Spielberg feels so pure.
So this in an emotional movie with some heartbreaking scenes. Its a good watch. It plays like a real life fairy tale.
A boy living in china gets separated from his parent during the Japanese invasion and he must learn to grow up in these harsh circumstances and in the process loose his innocence as a child.
Its one of those early movies where Spielberg is trying to make a turn into dramatic work from blockbuster film making. Hie is getting lot of resistance from not just critics but also from the people that matter like studio executives and financiers. But since he made them a lot of money he was given leeway to make few of these dramatic movies. Color purple and empire of the sun are some of his earlier forays into dramatics. Color purple was a massive success in terms of Oscar nominations and it did fairly well at box office. Because world wide audience along with US are interested in knowing about black culture but the weird thing about it all is that the curious of audience stop there. Other races and cultures want a movie about black culture with black cast and that's all. They are not interested in seeing black actors in common man movies or movies where the focus of the character is not on their blackness. Its the same even now. Black Panther has its roots in its blackness. Its about the culture of black people and so people are interested in seeing it and most of the audience are kids who don't know any better. Denzel Washington and will smith are the only two actors who were able to transcend it but even they had to stick with switching between commercial entertainers and low-budget dramas. They are not allowed to makes ambitious movies that have something to say like Revenant or the martian. Lets see if that changes.
This movie has a huge budget for its time. With the lead as an unknown that's pretty ballsy. Something like ET has alien as its star. But here the movie rests on the shoulder of young christian bale. I thought he did an outstanding job. The character is that of a highly active kid who survives the concentration camps of war by merely doing what he had to to survive. Over the course of his stay he is exposed to all possible kinds of human experiences. He sees some stuff he is not supposed to see at his age. All this accelerates his mental growth rate. At his age he doesn't see an enemy as an enemy rather he sees them as humans. But the circumstances forces him to behave like an adult. The movie has few cheesy lines and scenes where a Japanese kid tries to cut a fruit with a knife while Bale is holding it but from afar it looks like he is about to kill Bale. So the people who knew Bale from concentration camp tries to help and protect him but he sees adults making such evil decisions to kill an innocent kid trying to help him. There is no other way but to describe this journey as loss of innocence. I don't think Bale was acting and rather he was reacting. He was coached by Spielberg on the set in the moment. Which I think is how lot of kids act. They just react and throw a tantrum or something. They can't and don't internalize scenes and emotions. But there is so much Bale's face is emoting at a given time that it almost feels like he is mentally there.
Speaking of Bale, this is one of his early collaborations on a movie and that happens to be with Spielberg. I hate to compare this to any of the later collaborations of Spielberg. The main reason for that is in Spielberg's early part of career the cinematic landscape was different. Movies can sell themselves on their themes. Jaws and ET were more or less family friendly creature features. They are PG versions of Alien/The thing/Predator. They are mild and accessible enough to make boatloads of money. He made Indiana Jones movies as well cashing off the stardom of Harrison Ford from Star wars. I am not saying its easy but there is a clear path for those movies to make money. Heck, even Fugitive made lot of money. But from late 90s and early 2000s on wards Spielberg started behaving more and more like a better version of studio director for hire than a director with a vision. He always had his laurels to fall back on in terms of legacy and pedigree but for the most part he started behaving like a director dependent on the star power of the movie stars for box office rather than his own name brand and the strength of the movie. He collaborated with Tom Cruise , Tom hanks and DiCaprio. All these are bonafide movie stars who can bring in at-least 300 millions $ on a movie as long as it is either epic in scale or entertaining enough. He managed to not work with cheap movie stars like Adam Sandler but nonetheless he became dependent on star power. So none of those collaborations felt like a director pursuing his vision and more like studios put together a cast and a movie for him to direct. It all felt so commercial and cheap. In the last decade I felt most of his movies to be extremely pumped with studio push and marketing. Studios tried to push his movies way too hard to get some kind of recognition they never deserved. Even he is too scared to play it risky. All of them are just him playing it safe critically and financially. He lost his mojo. So to me collaboration in this movie always feels like classic Spielberg pursuing his vision and not forced by studios to cast someone because he is a movie-star. The collaboration between Christian Bale and Spielberg feels so pure.
So this in an emotional movie with some heartbreaking scenes. Its a good watch. It plays like a real life fairy tale.