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ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
BS Architecture Program
S.Y. 2015-2016, 1st Semester
History of Architecture 3

REACTION PAPER
(Empire of the Sun)
Submitted by: Dollisen, Wency R.
Bs Arch. 31E1
Submitted to: Ar. Serafin A. Ramento III

SUMMARY
The entire first act expands upon this idea, the total obliviousness of the British occupants of
China in the face of Japanese invasion. The opening, somber text scroll notes the apathy of the
British residents of China to the takeover, their arrogance blinding them from the possibility that
someone -- especially non-whites -- would or could seize them. The parents of Jamie Graham
(Christian Bale) take this view, the father casually chipping golf balls into the pool of his
luxurious estate and reassuring his son, "China isn't our war."
Even Jamie fits into the mindset, exploiting the family's Chinese maid into letting him have latenight snacks by telling her she must do as he says. The boy is too young to realize the classism
and racism in his words, and already Spielberg undercuts the idea of innocence and nostalgia
for an era that raised children to views others as inferior based on ethnicity and birthright.
The cluelessness of the British bourgeoisie is highlight shortly thereafter when all the white
families dress up for a lavish costume party as the mood in Shanghai darkens. A fleet of
chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce cars drive through throngs of tired, dirty Chinese peasants who
mill around restlessly as if they feel they should be fleeing but do not yet know why. The score in
this section is haunting, lightly dissonant without being overbearing, perfectly matching the drab
cinematography (a precursor to the desaturated tones of Saving Private Ryan). At the party, one
guest slurs an educated, erudite Chinese man for being in attendance, as if the thought of
Chinese running about in China was unspeakable and obscene.
As Jamie returns to his neighborhood in the hopes of his parents somehow returning home,
Spielberg inserts horrifyingly surreal of the vacant streets in the wake of the mass exodus.
Looted suitcases lie strewn about on the streets, mirroring later shots in both Schindler's
List and War of the Worlds. When Jamie arrives home, he finds a sticker plastered in front of the
door saying the house now belongs to the Japanese emperor, a darkly ironic subversion of
traditional imperialism, which saw white casually claiming the land of other races as their own.
Spielberg even inserted one such shot at the beginning after his marvelous, wordless setup of
place and character, cutting from the idyllic British life to an overhead shot of coffins containing
dead Chinese floating in the water as a boat lackadaisically knocks them aside. Late in the film,
Japanese soldiers march prisoners across hundreds of miles of terrain, and they stumble across
a field strewn with old luxuries -- cars, pianos, gilded furniture. It's a treasure trove, but no one
gives a damn, tearing apart these items looking for food and drink.
Most disturbing is the coldly vacant interior of Jamie's abandoned house. Just as his parents
ignored the terrifying truth at their doorstep, Jamie appears largely content by the whole
situation, sure that his parents will return and enjoying free reign of the house in the meantime.
He especially his parents' bedroom. Jamie there discovers his mother's footprint enshrined in
spilled talcum powder. First, Jamie regards it with light curiosity, even pleasant fondness, an
acceptable facsimile for his mother's presence. Then, his eyes scan over the whole room,
revealing more urgent foot and palm prints and kicked up talc, suggesting a struggle. The
implications finally hit the boy, who becomes so afraid he knocks open a window so the wind will
blow away the evidence. In the process, of course, the draft erases the last vestige of his

parents.
Eventually, food runs short, and Jamie heads out to find supplies, only to be robbed by a
Chinese teen and taken in by Basie (John Malkovich), an American ship steward marooned in
conquered Shanghai. Basie, however, proves more dangerous than desperate Chinese
peasants or vindictive Japanese soldiers, immediately trying to sell Jamie to a peasant as a
servant. Jamie indirectly gets his revenge when he takes Basie back to his rich neighborhood to
loot the place, only for Japanese soldiers to jump out of the house and imprison Jamie and
Basie's gang.
Up to this moment, Jamie has not allowed himself to process what he's been seeing, but
Spielberg bucks expectations by actually enhancing this obliviousness as Jamie is shuffled from
a holding area to an internments camp by an airfield. The director roots the atrocities Jamie
sees in the boy's perspective, adroitly keeping enough horror off-screen to avoid a PG-13 rating
while making the film that much darker by implication and the perverse, rotting innocence. of
what we do witness.
Basie, the Fagin to Jamie's Oliver Twist, admires the boy's pluck and exploits the child's
attempts to do anything to avoid reality by incorporating him into a complicated trading network
that takes the place of money in the camp. In the first camp, designed to separate the ablebodied from the sick, Basie shocks and disgusts Jamie by stealing the shoes of a dying woman
to give to the boy, and by stealing potatoes where possible. He's a man with nothing to live for,
but Basie will do anything, absolutely anything, to survive. After spending three years in the
Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center, though, Jamie is inured to such sights, and he routinely
helps out Basie, though he does balance his actions with a concern for the other prisoners' wellbeing.
He does so to make life seem as pleasant as possible, but we can see the atrocity through his
perspective. The two times Basie is beaten by Japanese soldiers, the camera stays on Jamie's
face as he watches his ersatz father figure take his punishment. His other parental symbol, Dr.
Rawlins (Nigel Havens), asks him for help in trying to revive a woman with no pulse. Jamie
performs CPR frantically until the woman's straight-ahead stare shifts to look at the boy. He
thinks he's saving her, but the doctor rightly says he simply pumped enough blood to the brain
for one last nervous twitch. A nurse optimistically offers that the woman got the chance to feel as
if she died in England by looking on the boy, but all he, and we, can see is her frozen rictus on
her clammy face. In the film's darkest moment, Basie sends Jamie through the camp to set
snare traps. Williams' score matches the imagination and sense of adventure with which Jamie
takes to the task of sneaking around camp and even under the barbed wire that separates the
camp from the airfield. Then the camera moves back to Basie and his American crew watching,
revealing that the man really sent the boy in there to test for mines. Worse still, he and the
others take bets over whether Jamie will trip one and kill himself.

REACTION:

For me, it was one of the most bizarre movie that Ive watched. I noticed that this film was made
by Stephen Spielberg, who made movie blockbusters like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Jurassic
Park, and the Indiana Jones film series. The Empire of the Sun film has a big difference from the
blockbuster movies because it is a war film. It is very rare to be watching a young boy who
came from a wealthy family to turn into someone who can adapt during the war and admire
Japanese pilots. The movie was adapted from the novel of the same name by J.G Ballard. , it is
essentially fiction but draws extensively on Ballard's experiences in World War II. The name of the
novel is derived from the etymology of the name for Japan.
Christian Bale, who potrayed the main character, did a great job acting his role. At first, I was
very mad at his character because he just do things without thinking first. I cannot blame him for
being oblivious and ignorant about what was happening around him because he was still twelve
years old. His innocence was gone because his eyes saw the brutal violence of the Japanese
soldiers. I was surprised he survived starvation and violence then he was sent to the orphanage
in the end of the film. Jamie Graham tried to surrender to the Japanese soldiers Japanese
soldiers didnt shoot him at sight because they thought of him as a joke. I was impressed when
he adapted from the environment and he sells cigarettes to folks. It is very good to see him
evolve from being a spoiled wealthy brat into a matured and independent adolescent.
The main focus of Empire of the Sun is Jim's maturation from child to man during World War II.
After the war begins and he is separated from his parents, he spends the remainder of the film
trying to reunite with them. He learns to survive the brutal conditions he faces in detention and
prison camps. As a result of these experiences, he learns important lessons about himself and
human nature. As the film traces Jim's maturation, he explores the transformations he
experiences. The biggest change occurs when Jim is wrenched from his comfortable, privileged
life in Shanghai and forced to live, as do the Chinese, with deprivation and the constant threat of
death. This experience brings Jim to new levels of self-discovery as he realizes his ingenuity,
courage, and resilience in the face of tragedy. It was released, was one of the most bizarre
experiences I ever had watching a movie that felt like nothing short of an incomparable work
from a filmmaking artist at his most supreme heights. Jim's ability to cope with his harsh
surroundings reveals his strength of character and the nature of human adaptability. While
others escape through death, Jim resolves to survive. In order to do this, he learns how to eat
insects and to ingratiate himself with his captors.
It is Jim closing his eyes in the comfort and safety of his mother's arms as he had envisioned in
the Norman Rockwell page he posted near his beds...parents tucking their son into bed. When
he had given up at last after the P 51s bombed the runway he had helped to build, his eyes
again filled with hope as Mrs. Victor pinned on the wall above his bed in the children's camp. His
eyes shutting at the end of the film are peace. At last he can rest. He us truly tucked in again.
This is a story of a boy who goes through hell with the hope of being his mother's boy again.
That's all he learned to know was important in life. And indeed. That is what is what makes or
break the kind of human being we become when we are grown.