4. Child in Time &...

Lyrics

Sweet child in time, you'll see the line
Line that's drawn between good and bad
See the blind man shooting at the world
Bullets flying, ooh taking toll
If you've been bad - Oh Lord I bet you have
And you've not been hit oh by flying lead
You'd better close your eyes, aahaouho bow your head
Wait for the ricochet

Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo..
Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo..
Aaa-aaa-aaa..
Oh, I wanna hear you sing..
Aaa-aaa-aaa..
Oaoh..
AAA-AAA-AAA!!
AAA-AAA-AAA!!


Sweet child in time, you'll see the line
Line that's drawn between good and bad
See the blind man shooting at the world
Bullets flying, mm taking toll
If you've been bad - Lord I bet you have
And you've not been hit oh by flying lead
You'd better close your eyes, aahaao bow your head
Wait for the ricochet

Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo..
Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo..
Aaa-aaa-aaa..
Oh, I gotta hear you sing..
Aaa-aaa-aaa..
Oaoh..
AAA-AAA-AAA!!
Oh..
AAA-AAA-AAA!!

Oh..god oh no..oh god no..oh..ah..no ah..AAh..oh..AAWAAH!!..oh

The song is very good, but at 10 minutes and 20 seconds, it is too long. Anyway, the song seems to be about a child in wartime, who doesn't yet understand the severity of war. There are many movies that deal with this subject. I chose to discuss a movie by Steven Spielberg which I hadn't yet seen.

The Movie: Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg, 1987)

As far as I can remember E.T. was the first movie that I've seen that was considered to be a classic. I didn't like it much back then when I was something like 8 years old, and I still don't really like it. It's way too sentimental for my taste. But, while I can't say that there is a single movie by Spielberg that is really among my favorites, I find all his other movies, I've seen to be very good or at least entertaining. Even Hook is not that bad. (Though I haven't seen either his best considered movie, Schindler' List or his worst considered one, 1941) He really knows how to make his movies compelling and interesting and how to create great shots and scenes. I just find it very unfortunate that he tends to become very sentimental near the end of almost all his pictures.

Empire of the Sun surprised me quite a lot. It's not his best (that's Munich) or his most fun (that's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), but it's certainly his most beautiful and audacious one. It's quite unlike anything else I've seem by him and I would actually say it's more an art-house film than a blockbuster. If you are interested in a movie that tells a story with a logical plot, this is not exactly the movie you should watch.

It starts pretty normally though. For a while it looks like this is going to be a movie about how the old life of the British aristocrats in China came to an end due to the Japanese invasion of China during the second world war. The prologue of the movie is full of scenes which signify that this wonderful life is slowly coming to an end. During a costume party in one of this 'British' houses, for example, our main protagonist Jamie Graham, played by a 13-year old Christian Bale, goes out to play with his plane and finds that not very far from the party a Japanese plane has crashed. And next to it there is a whole contingent of Japanese soldiers waiting for a provocation from the Brits, so they can fight them. This prologue comes to an end when during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai and the ensuing confusion on the streets, Jamie gets separated from his parents. This is a masterfully directed sequence full of some wonderful images. Spielberg manages to both show us the chaos and make us aware at all time what exactly is happening and what the dangers are for our main protagonists.

The rest of the movie we will follow Jamie. After being separated Jamie goes home, hoping to find his parents there. But the house is now Japanese property, just like many other houses in the neighborhood. We see the Japanese taking the furniture out of all this houses, which is a set-up for some of the most wonderful shots I've seen in a long time, later on in the movie. Anyway, when Jamie runs out of food, he has to leave his house ends up with Baisie (John Malkovich) and Frank (Joe Pantoliano), two scheming merchant seaman. Due to Jamie's fault all three of them end up in a Japanese workers camp. This is where we'll stay until almost the end of the movie.

Before the camp scenes I already thought that the movie was a bit too far-fetching in the depiction of Jamie's independence. He wasn't troubled at all by the fact that he was now alone and one point I was even reminded of Home Alone. Well, this is even more enhanced in the camp scenes and this confused me quite a bit at first. Jamie copes very well inside the camp, showing such wit, intelligence and courage that it hardly would be believable in an adult, let alone a kid. On top of this Spielberg doesn't present life in the camp as grim for Jamie. In fact you could almost say he enjoys himself. I found it weird how Spielberg could present such a simplistic view of both childhood and the workers camps. But then came a scene in which Jamie is sent by Baisie under false pretenses to search for mines in a certain area of the camp. Baisie wants to know whether he can escape using that path. Jamie finds no mines and narrowly escapes a suspecting Japanese soldier. In a completely unrealistic scene Basie and his men welcome him back as a hero. And through the cinematography used in the scene Spielberg shows that he intends the scene to be unrealistic. Now I realized that I wasn't watching a drama about the experiences of a boy in a Japanese workers camp. I was watching the boy's (re-)imagination of that period of his life. The movie is an often grim fairy-tale about memory and about how re-imagining horrific things might make our life better at that moment, but in the end it is pretty dangerous. We lose sight of what is real and forget it. In the end, the camp is liberated and Jamie realizes he has completely forgotten how his parents look like. In the end, I believe, the movie wants to make the point that no matter how grim reality is, we have to face it. Because, well, it is the reality after all. And as I said before Spielberg reaches this conclusion with some some great scenes, even some funny ones, and, in my opinion, the most wonderful shots in all of his movies.

Lastly Christian Bale might give his best performance here and it's always great to see a slightly villainous John Malkovich. It's also funny to see a very young Ben Stiller in a small role.