Hacker Cinema
Empire of the Sun
1987 · Film · 153 min
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.
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19 comments on Hacker News
Perhaps his best known work is the novels that were made into movies, “Crash” and “High-Rise”, and neither is science fiction.
There’s also “Empire of the Sun” that was adapted by Steven Spielberg, but it’s autobiographical so doesn’t really count.
Almost everyone here will have seen a movie he was the screenwriter for or contributed to: Shakespeare in Love, Brazil, Empire of the Sun, even bits of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
A lot of folks here will have read either Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead or Arcadia, which are still probably his best plays, and certainly the best introduction to his work. I personally also really like The Invention of Love, about the gloomy tortured homosexual poet and classical scholar A.E. Housman, which was also apparently Stoppard's favorite of his plays. It's definitely niche territory though and you might need to care at least just a little about A Shropshire Lad and latin textual criticism. The Coast of Utopia is even more packed with history and erudition, although worth a read; the currently top comment here is a quote from it about death, childhood, and the pursuit of happiness.
He had an interesting combination of traits that many HN readers will probably appreciate: erudite to the point of elitism, although never attended college; a self-described "small c. conservative in politics, literature, education and theatre" with libertarian inclinations, but he wrote a sprawling trilogy about 19th-century Russian socialist and anarchist exiles (The Coast of Utopia).
Now that he's dead, I want to go back and re-read all his plays, including the ones I never managed to get to before.
I'll never forget the first time I heard his name. As a kid, I had seen the Spielberg film Empire of the Sun starring a young Christian Bale and considered it one of my favorites. When I was an adult eagerly showing it to friends, one of them who was a theater major loudly exclaimed during the opening credits, "Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay?!" I knew most of the names in the opening credits but had no idea who Tom Stoppard was until that moment.
When he passed away a couple days ago, I was surprised to discover he was originally from a Moravian town I've been to since one of my ancestors grew up 10 miles farther down the road. The twists and turns his family took escaping from there to the other side of the world and back no doubt enhanced his keen insight into people.
That one and The Last Wave are the ones from his remaining ~7 movies I've not seen, that I fully expect to be good. I know less of the reputation of the other five, but even if all of them are bad that'll leave him with an excellent batting average.
[EDIT] To expand on my late-discovered love of the guy's work, the key figures in my slowly drifting toward being a bit of an actual film fan were all people I knew by name: Spielberg (Empire of the Sun, plus all his usual biggies), Don Bluth (Learning so young that a movie can hurt... and that can be a really good thing!), and George Lucas (first by hooking me on Star Wars, which got me into making-ofs and the craft of film-making and editing, the idea of the pastiche film which sent me chasing down influences, and then with the prequels with wanting, owing to my prior high levels of engagement with the franchise, to dig deeper into "... but why, exactly, are they so bad?" which was its own kind of education); but then, some time in the back half of my 30s, I discovered that a bunch of other films that'd been key on that journey were all by this one other dude whose name had previously failed to register. He was this fourth major figure in the early and middle parts of this journey, for me, and I didn't even know it!
I see a lot of shade thrown at Kathleen Kennedy these days. Sure, some of the Star Wars movies under Disney haven't been great, but look at this resume. It's incredible. I'll save you the click and put some things she's been the executive producer of here: Poltergeist, E.T., IJ & Temple of Doom, Goonies, Back to the Future(I,II,III), Young Sherlock Holmes, The Money Pit, Empire of the Sun, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (jumping ahead to more recent stuff), Rogue One, Andor, Mandalorian, Ashoka, Skeleton Crew....
So yes, not everything has been a winner, but to say that having her name attached to something means it won't be good means that either A)you might not be informed about her resume or B)you have another reason you don't like her involvement with a project.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005086/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_0_nm_8_in_0_q_kathleen%2520kenedy
Absolutely love this trilogy too. The Drowned World was my first proper introduction to Ballard.
I'd always liked the movie Empire of the Sun since I was a kid, but could never quite put my finger on why. One day in 2020 I read the films wikipedia page, started reading more about him as an author and got hooked.
To quote John Gray [1],
>Unlike many others, it wasn't his dystopian vision that gripped my imagination. For me his work was lyrical – an evocation of the beauty that can be gleaned from landscapes of desolation.
1. https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2018/12/john-gray-on-jg-ballard-conversation
While “Arcadia” is likely of greatest interest to HN readers of all of Tom Stoppard’s plays, I also highly recommend “Jumpers” and “The Hard Problem.”
Also worth noting the many excellent films he wrote, like “Brazil” and “Empire of the Sun.”
"Empire of the Sun" is a pretty good movie. I must read the novel one day.
- The slow motion pass of the Mustang in Empire Of The Sun, that is for planes nuts like me ...
and
- the ending scene of Le Train (1973) with Romy Schneider.
But so many movies scenes I like... That's just the ones that come to mind at the moment.
As for Casablanca, shame on me, I've never seen it. Just some small parts, and each times it looked so cliché that I had always delayed when I would watch it. Only in Hollywood could one have the idea of a French Prefet de Police (Louis Renault character, well named) always wearing a uniform, wearing a ridiculous kepi (Prefets have caps, not kepis) tilted on the side, with a small moustache and a eyebrow higher than the other. I mean, the scene mentioned may be beautiful (again I've never seen it) but that character is sooo much the anglo-saxon cliché of the "untrusthy Frenchman" ... almost a cartoon character.
Anyways, have to take time to watch Casablanca, and die less dumb.
I've never seen Empire of the Sun (1987), and yet the original soundtrack (OST)[1] composed by John Williams is special to me. But you are right, yes, soundtracks intensify feelings for particular scenes (or even for the entire film at large), i.e., for me: The Cider House Rules (1999) OST[2] composed by Rachel Portman exemplifies that.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_3_skKeGCc&list=PLSO9Kihiwr3PVFCiRcfVLjqRqPMS-fsZ0
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zTbB0L3dqM&list=OLAK5uy_l28ITbpvI2BuQuteRx9AeQBhGdgxsR_R4
I just watched The Deer Hunter (1978) for the first time, which Walken described as kicking off his fame.
If you haven't seen it before, it's long but worth a watch. Left me longing for more older films, like the original Rambo, Empire of the Sun, or The Razor's Edge. They don't make movies like that anymore.
Thanks for posting this!
I highly recommend the movie “Empire of the Sun” in addition to the book, which the article says had just been published at the time of the interview. The movie was directed by Spielberg and stars a young Christian Bale. It’s one of my favorites, but seems to have been mostly forgotten, or at least I seldom hear it mentioned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_the_Sun_(film)
https://youtu.be/i_WiDVA1kLY
From an early age I’ve appreciated his screenplay for the film Empire of the Sun.
On the one hand I see where they are coming from. On the other I sure do enjoy the genius of production of those old animations, particularly Fantasia. On the one hand I understand the criticism that Spielberg torpedoed indie cinema, on the other hand Empire of the Sun was a masterpiece. Two things can exist, in their own right, meriting praise, yet opposed and unresolved.
The "solemn girls' choir" was particularly moving and powerful when it was used for Suo Gân in Empire of the Sun (and it was a boys' choir in that film). Time hasn't been kind to that one for me (though it still fares better than the creepy five-year-old).
Your first link is to one of a series of articles linking Star Wars to: Lawrence of Arabia; E.T.; the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad; The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly; Empire of the Sun; and possibly others. They can't all be major influences!
The start of the YouTube video puts the exposition of the attack from one film next to the exposition of the attack from the other. Is that really such a strong similarity? I'd guess a lot of war/action movies have a here's-how-it's-going-to-go-down scene. Some of the other pairings are closer - I think I buy the one with the line about the number of guns.
So, I see a Dam Busters reference, and that's interesting! But I'd need more convincing that it's used for storyboarding.
And the inclusion of films like Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun" is bizarre. That film is like a 2hr episode of "Hogan's Heros" set in a Japanese POW camp.
Pretty much how I read it though a bit overboard in characterization.
The story comes off to me as: Knuth calling Jobs out for flattery/embellishment. I bet everyone Steven Spielberg meets tells him he's their favorite director and they've seen all his movies. But if you look at the numbers for Empire of the Sun that just isn't possible.
1. The best of Youth. (Italian movie, 6 hours long, completely moving) 2. Empire of the Sun 3. ...