In my point of view, Spielberg wants to expre many aspects in the movie Empire of the Sun, including the cruelty of war, the will of life and the paion of dream.However, when conveying the three aspects, he fails to give them an appropriate sequence, but just put them together instead of considering the logic and importance of these themes.
There is no doubt that Spielberg’s aim is to demonstrate the hurt that war bring us.Yet he choose a little boy from England as a main character.From this view, we cannot touch the real hurt that Japanese brings because he didn’t form a correct value of the world.We can see that Jimmy ardently love “Zero” warplane and Japanese pilot.From his point, he admire the spirit of these Japanese solider.Therefore, the movie has bias from the very beginning to the end, impairing the theme of against the war.
The movie also wants to eulogize the will of life.Little Jim choose all the way to keep alive.He ate maggot, looted lunchbox from died people and work for others to exchange food and water.These made him grow up quickly from a boy to a man.But this theme is really not that important in the movie.Spielberg only use no more than fifteen minutes to expre it.So the impreion of the theme is not very deeply.
The third one is the boy’s paion on warplane and pilot, which is the hardest part for me to understand.When having experienced so many sufferings that Japanese bring him, how can he kept the paion and love? As a child, it’s reasonable that he don’t understand what war is.But it’s strange that he don’t hate the people who hurt him just because he love their plane.
In a short, the movie convey too much, yet nothing can touch me.
