Sam (00:14)
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. This week we’re talking about the film Empire of the Sun, which came out in 1987. It was directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tom Stoppard. It’s based on the 1984 novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard, and it’s the semi-autobiographical tale of a young British boy who becomes a prisoner of the Japanese outside of Shanghai, China during World War II.

It was nominated for six Academy Awards and won none, and you can find it on Amazon Prime. What did you think of this movie?

Maartje (00:44)
1987, that’s the year I was born. So, it made me feel old for one.

Yeah, that made me feel old because he’s older than I am, but not that much. But yeah, I really enjoyed this movie. I feel like I’ve seen it before, maybe as a child. I’ve seen it, but I can’t remember any specifics. And seeing this again, or…I guess effectively, for the first time, consciously watching this movie, I enjoyed it for sure. I found Christian Bale’s character really annoying, which I think is maybe the point. But it’s nice seeing all these actors that I’ve known from other things when they were starting out, and I thought that was exciting. And again, a different part of the war we haven’t discussed yet.

So, I feel like we’re kind of in an interesting corner of the World War II universe right now, and I’m enjoying myself. How about you?

Sam (01:42)
Well, it’s funny because I’ve read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, and it is also set in this strange kind of limited liminal space, like this movie, largely inside a POW camp, for example. I definitely feel like the same person wrote both of those. It’s like a little bit absurdist. It’s a little bit unrealistic in places. I also read the book.

I really enjoyed it. I definitely think it’ll be on my top 10 list of World War II books that I’ve read this year. J.G. Ballard has a science fiction background. That was largely what he was known for before he wrote Empire of the Sun. it’s interesting because he had published like 20 books or something before he wrote Empire. But in some ways, Empire and I think he even described it this way, is the father of all the books that came before it.

his wartime experience really really informed his fiction and I think you can tell in certain ways which we’ll definitely talk about more as we talk about the movie but yeah I thought the movie was a solid adaptation and I also enjoyed it.

Maartje (02:40)
I also read that Ballard was specifically impressed with Christian Bale’s portrayal, which is nice, I guess, that he liked it. it kind of felt a little bit like…

It felt a bit like an adventure movie set in World War II and limited in a way that we follow it through this young boy’s eyes mostly and his very specific interest that he has. It comes through a lot in this-

Film, or just aviation, so I enjoyed all of that, to be honest. And yeah, I forgot it was a Spielberg movie, somehow, so that surprised me at the very end. I was like, this is a Spielberg, interesting. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I would watch it again, I think.

Sam (03:23)
I think that’s the difficult part of adapting a book like this because Ballard it’s a third person perspective, but it’s obviously based so much on his own experiences that we see the world purely through Jim’s eyes and he’s 10 or 11 when the book starts and he’s 14 by the time it ends and such a huge chunk of his life has been taken up by living in this prison or war camp and not knowing what’s going to happen to him.

and he feels like the camp is a safe place, it feels like home to you know, even when they’re on the death march, he keeps being like, well, can we go back to the camp? When will we go back to the camp and wait for the Americans to come and that kind of stuff? And just in the book, you have to kind of deduce what the actual world is like based on Jim’s conclusions about it, because you are only getting his very like limited childlike perspective. And so

Maartje (03:59)
Hmm?

Mmm.

Sam (04:12)
He often draws very logical conclusions, but you can tell as someone who’s an adult who has experience in the world that they’re not necessarily always the right ones. And when you adapt it into a film, obviously we are seeing things play out and we get to, put our own perspectives on it and we’re not limited to what Jim is seeing. So I think it’s a little bit difficult to give us solely the child point of view.

But think they did as good a job as you possibly could do in that situation.

Maartje (04:39)
I think so too, I think it’s surprisingly narrow. They do a good job at like, keeping your focus on his journey specifically. And even the things going on around it, like the atom bomb that goes off eventually, like we will know what it is, but it’s portrayed in such a way that it could literally be anything else. If you don’t know, like Jim wouldn’t I think-

They did that quite convincingly for a number of things. So, yeah. an interesting way to tell a very difficult story to use a child. Like, we’ve seen a number of movies now using children. And I think this is one of the more successful ones. For me, at least.

Sam (05:21)
I think the atom bomb is a good example where in the book it’s clear when Jim tells adults around him that he saw the atomic bomb that they don’t necessarily believe him and it’s sort of like where has the audience left wondering? Is it hallucinatory? Did he really see it? Does he just think that he saw it? And I think it’s a bit more difficult to get that across in a film context.

Maartje (05:45)
for sure. if I had not known anything about World War II, I don’t know if I would have clocked as easily that that was the atom bomb going off that he saw, so maybe it works if you don’t know? A bit more even, perhaps?

Sam (06:00)
Yeah, maybe.

Maartje (06:01)
Anyway, get into the plot.

The movie starts with an opening card that’s also read out loud, and it’s fairly long, with me. In 1941, China and Japan had been in a state of undeclared war for four years. was in control of much of the countryside and many towns and cities. In Shanghai, thousands of Westerners protected by

Diplomatic security of the international settlement continued to live as they had lived since the British came the 19th century and the image of their own country, banking houses, hotels, offices, churches, and homes that might have been uprooted from Liverpool or Surrey Now their time was running out. Outside Shanghai, the Japanese dug in

for Pearl Harbor.

Sam (06:58)
Yeah, so let’s talk about why there’s an international settlement in Shanghai. 1839 has been referred to as the beginning of the century of humiliation, quote, unquote, for China. Basically, the British were involved in a roaring opium trade. The Chinese government was not a big fan of that. So they’d attempted to curb it by seizing opium from British dealers. As you can imagine, that pissed the British off. So there was a war, the first opium war.

And the British won that conflict and they China to what is known today as one of the unequal treaties. And so the Chinese had to cede Hong Kong to the British and they were forced to open five major ports to British trade. This also resulted in the creation of the international settlement in Shanghai, which is where our main character Jim lives. And British subjects who lived there enjoyed extra territoriality, which means they had indemnity. They were not subject to the laws of the land. They could

do whatever they wanted. they lived a very privileged Western style of life. Japanese troops invaded Shanghai in 1931 and completed their takeover of the city. Once the second Sino-Japanese war began in 1937, the international settlement was effectively left alone until the attack on Pearl Harbor, after which European influence was ended for the duration of the war and the Westerners were sent to Lungwa Civilian Assembly Center and internment camp run by the Japanese.

on the campus of what had formerly been a school outside of Shanghai, as we see in the movie.

Maartje (08:23)
saying live privileged life is no lie. Even in the movie, It made me feel uncomfortable to a big extent, like even though these seem to be nice people and they seem to treat their staff quite fairly, except for Jim. Jim is kind of an asshole. But it’s just…

They gave me like, bad feelings and bad vibes and they go to a kids birthday party in like, costume and they’re all racist and disgusting and I don’t like it.

Sam (08:54)
Yeah, well Ballard describes the disconnect between this closed off life that the Europeans are living and the reality outside of the settlement gates. And I just text from the book. So it says, Jim could remember visiting Hangzhou with his parents in 1937, a few days after the battle. Parties of Europeans and Americans drove from Shanghai and parked their limousines on country roads covered with cartridge cases.

The ladies in silk dresses and their husbands in gray suits strolled through the debris of a war arranged for them by a passing demolition squad. To Jim, the battlefield seemed more like a dangerous rubbish tip. Ammunition boxes and discarded rifles stacked like matchwood and artillery pieces still hitched to the carcasses of horses. The belt ammunition of machine guns lying in the grass resembled the skins of venomous snakes. All around them were the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers.

They lined the verges of the roads and floated in canals, jammed together around the pillars of the bridges. In the trenches between the burial mounds, hundreds of dead soldiers sat side by side with their heads against the torn earth as if they had fallen asleep together in a deep dream of war.

Maartje (09:56)
disconnect is so real. Like, I don’t remember what exactly she says, but Miranda Richardson’s character, as they are being taken to the camps says something really entitled And it just made me laugh because it’s so ridiculously out of touch with their surroundings that it made me just giggle.

Sam (10:16)
The movie after the opening cards opens on coffins slowly floating down the Yangtze River in Shanghai, China. And this is described in the book as well where because of the high water table, it was difficult to bury people and it was also really expensive to hold funerals. So people would just set their families afloat and their coffins garlanded with flowers and with the hopes that the coffins would eventually reach the sea.

We get the introduction of our main character, 11-year-old Jim Graham, played by Christian Bale, and his privileged life at the International Settlement.

Maartje (10:49)
You such a brat, Jesus Christ.

Sam (10:51)
He’s definitely bratty in the movie than in the book. did find Movie Jim a little bit grating at times.

Maartje (10:58)
He’s unkind to the staff, he’s spoiled, and he’s obsessed with aviation, which I did like.

Sam (11:06)
They actually did three weeks of filming in Shanghai for this and they had to get permission effectively the film company that is an extension of the Communist Party apparatus in China. And they were in Shanghai since the 1940s.

Maartje (11:22)
what he’d have to jump through to be able to do that.

Sam (11:26)
Yeah, for sure.

Maartje (11:27)
The war begins to encroach on Jim’s family’s peaceful, protected existence, and Jim’s father makes the decision that the family will leave the city. They do this kind of after they’ve been to this party that I mentioned where they all dress up in racist costumes, and Jim accidentally stumbles upon a Japanese regiment while playing with his toy glider.

and it’s a very tense moment, but then they can still just walk away from it, but then they do decide they have to leave, but they are too late, as the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor, and they are officially at war with the West. Jim becomes separated from his parents in a crowd. It’s a pretty terrifying moment for Jim, but also for us as an audience. I felt this terror, to be honest. And…

What I liked about this particular scene a little bit is that their driver does their best to help them still, but they do leave him behind, which I thought was so cruel. But for some reason, Jim survives, I don’t know how, because I would have just died, I think, and he returns home, but his parents aren’t there. And his governess is still there, but she slaps him.

in the face because he’s been an awful child to her it’s just one indication that the old social order is completely gone poor Jim he’s like he doesn’t understand what’s going on why he can no longer bust around this lady felt kind of sorry for him and also not

Sam (12:54)
Jim’s relative lack of fear when he encounters the Japanese regiment is very much a thing in the book. Throughout the book he talks about after the war is over he wants to join the Japanese Air Force because for most of his life all of the fancy, new, expensive, shiny planes seen have been flown by Japanese pilots. He has always felt this disconnect from, you know, the Japanese have occupied the rest of Shanghai, but

hasn’t really touched his life in the international settlement, so he doesn’t perceive the Japanese as the bad guys necessarily. For him, he’s like any little boy will find a hero wherever they can, right? And so as the war progresses, he considers their life in the camp as the Japanese are keeping us safe, the Japanese are giving us food, and he kind of looks up to them in a way.

That was a nice short hint for that in the film, how he encounters them and he’s just like, ⁓ soldiers, cool. Basically, not aware of the danger.

Maartje (13:48)
I think he also carries with him a little toy Japanese zero that he just takes everywhere with him. thinks it’s the coolest. And to be fair, if you are a kid, it says something about the innocence of children in a war, right? The children, don’t really see evil yet. And I think he even talks to his father about this at some point.

and his father reminds him that we don’t want the Japanese to brother. He’s like, yeah, yeah, I know. But he clearly doesn’t believe it.

Sam (14:17)
Yeah.

Jim survives on his own for a while. Initially, it’s a bit of an adventure. He’s riding his bike inside the house. He’s like any kid who’s excited to be able to explore the space without the restrictions of their usual rules and social norms. But he soon runs out of food at home. The electricity is gone. The water is not running. So he has to venture into the dangerous, chaotic city. He keeps trying to surrender to the Japanese. At one point, he chases a truck full of

British prisoners, but he doesn’t manage to catch it. He’s really trying to get them to send him to a camp because he knows I think that his long term survival on his own is, is unlikely. they’re make fun of him whenever he tries to surrender to them or to them or he or they just ignore him.

Maartje (15:01)
I did like this scene where he rides his bike around the house because it’s mirrored later on and it made me feel… it made me feel something when it’s mirrored later on. We’ll probably get there at the end, know how this kid even survived as long as he did, to be honest. But just when you think he can’t survive for much longer, he’s…

picked up by a hustler type called Frank who’s played by Joe Panteliano and he takes him to his pal, Basie played by John Malkovich and they take Jim under their wing, kind of, because they don’t really want to keep him around but also they don’t want to let him die on the street and they try to sell him which he seems to be

encouraging of, but they are unsuccessful. knowing that he’s reaching the end of his usefulness to them, but not wanting to be left behind to fend for himself, Jun guides them to his old neighbourhood to try and go loot some of fancy houses. But then, when they get to his house, they accidentally surprise a group of Japanese soldiers, and are then captured. Oops.

Sam (16:09)
Yeah, seeing these, you know, the empty house where his parents had lived, the empty swimming pool, these strange, haunted post-apocalyptic landscapes, these are the things that he obviously witnessed during the Second World War, and these founded basis for a lot of the science fiction that he went on to write later. So I just think it’s interesting how similar

the landscapes of his childhood are with the fictional landscapes that he would go on to write later.

sent to an internment camp, Jim is put to work building an airport runway. Three years pass, and as the end of the war approaches in 1945, we see how well Jim has adapted to camp life. He’s even learned to speak some Japanese, which we see when he prevents Japanese camp guards from breaking the hospital windows as reprisals for an American bombing.

Maartje (16:56)
did life scenes in this. becomes a real and he’s really clever in trading and everybody likes him. He’s still annoying though, everybody does like him. I think he manages to find some people who knew his parents in the camp, so everybody kind of looks after him a little bit, but he also helps everybody, so he’s kind of smart.

I really, really, really like John Malkovich in this movie. You can see that Jim really looks up to his character, Basie, but you also know as an adult, you know that you cannot trust this man to keep his word, because that’s the kind of man he is, but Jim obviously doesn’t see it, and this connection between the two… It’s brilliantly acted. I find it really believable.

Sam (17:44)
I liked it too. did find that I think book Jim is a little more like in some in some instances, he almost seemed kind of like feral child to me. It was like he knew that he couldn’t trust Basie but he also knew that he didn’t have a lot of other options. So yeah, Jim’s a little bit more innocent in the movie, I guess.

Maartje (17:59)
I guess to make him bit more sheltered and privileged, so he just thinks that everybody will do what he wants because that’s what he’s used to. It kind of felt to me like that. A little bit more.

Sam (18:10)
me there.

Ballard was interned in real life with his parents and younger sister from 1942 to 1945, so he didn’t have this solo adventure like Jim had, but he supposedly attempted to write the novel with the main character having his parents in the camp with him, but it didn’t really tell the story that he wanted it to tell. He describes it as not feeling psychologically true. He’s like, yeah, my parents were in the camp with me, but I like mentally was alone

13,500 European and American civilian internees were held in China throughout the war by the Japanese. Ballard describes having some memories of the camp. internees set up schools, they held concerts, they were trying to maintain a little bit of normalcy.

partially succeeded, I guess, but there were food shortages. Ballard describes his parents as starving for him and his sister because by the end of the war, the POWs were down to a few hundred calories a day in terms of food that they were getting from the Japanese. Ballard explained in an interview that he had also originally intended to have an adult protagonist in his book, but it didn’t work because he hadn’t experienced the camp as an adult. It didn’t feel authentic to write it that way.

There’s also an almost dreamy, hallucinatory quality to the child’s perspective in the book. I took this little paragraph from the end of one of the chapters. Jim stepped into the grass, leaving the dust clouds and lines of Chinese soldiers. He wanted to see the parked aircraft for the last time to stand under the dark span of their wings. He knew that the Chinese soldiers were being worked to death, that the starving men were laying their own bones in a carpet for the Japanese bombers who would land upon them.

Then they would go to the pit, where the lime-booted sergeants waited with their Mausers, and after laying their stones, he and Basie and Dr. Ransom would also go to the pit. The last light had faded from the fuselages of the aircraft, but Jim could smell their engines on the night air. He inhaled the odour of oil and engine coolant. Already he had begun to shut out the voices around him, the white bodies of the Chinese soldiers, and the runway of bones. He shut out the young Japanese pilot in his flying suit, who was pointing at him and shouting to the sergeants beside the pit.

Jim hoped that his parents were safe and dead. Brushing the dust from his blazer, he ran towards the shelter of the aircraft, eager to unfold himself in their wings.

Maartje (20:21)
Wow. That sounds like a really fun book. I might have to actually pick it up.

Sam (20:26)
It’s really good. I quite enjoyed it.

Maartje (20:28)
I do see how some of the words in this do make it into the movie. The way Jim describes certain things is quite similar to what you’ve just read. It’s interesting and I also really like that Jim clearly tries to befriend everyone because he also gets a Japanese pilot’s jacket in the very beginning when he gets to the camp and he kind of sneaks out to one of the planes.

Sam (20:38)
Yeah.

Maartje (20:54)
This kid’s like, I’m just gonna befriend everybody. Everybody’s gonna find me annoying. That’s not what he thinks, but we know. it’s a really, for me, different kind of portrayal of a kid in the war because it doesn’t feel that… I’m sure it’s terrible in real life, but it feels almost kind of happy and…

Sam (21:02)
Ha

Maartje (21:14)
Even the way the cat looks is kind of… Some bits are kind of fancy looking and kind of they have a garden and it’s kind of a good time. So… I don’t know.

Sam (21:25)
I think part of that is true, right? Especially for him as a kid, his parents would have shielded him from the worst of it, probably. And like I said, in the book, he constantly references the camp as being a safe place where the Japanese soldiers take care of them. that’s, I mean, by the time he gets out of the camp, a quarter of his memories are from his life inside of the camp. It’s all he knows. And so for him, it’s not necessarily

Maartje (21:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam (21:50)
this terrible place where he’s just waiting for the war to be over because he has no idea what that’s gonna look like.

Maartje (21:54)
in that vein it’s a little bit similar to Life is Beautiful we see it from the adult point of view but it’s a child from the worst of it. So in that sense that also makes sense.

Jim’s survival skills are put to the test when he’s almost discovered laying a pheasant traps for a Basie outside of the wire that surrounds the perimeter of the camp. But he is rescued by a young Japanese pilot who doesn’t look much older than he does. That he is previously befriended because he also has a plane. And he’s played by…

Cateoka? we see them again when he attempts to prevent Basie from being punished for his thieving by hinting that Basie should beg for forgiveness. But Basie’s beaten anyway. And while he’s beaten, He tells Jim to look after his stuff.

But Jimmy is still a cairn so I don’t know what else he was thinking.

Sam (22:47)
I think he thought that Jim was probably the only one who wouldn’t steal all of his shit for himself.

Maartje (22:52)
kind of this crime boss, but he’s not necessarily a bad guy.

Sam (22:58)
Yeah, he’s I mean, he’s just in it for himself, right? Like when they’re being taken to the camps, he essentially tries to abandon Jim at one point. But Jim’s survival skills are so interesting because there’s no ego in it. Like he figured out the way of the world here. And even if it requires bowing to the Japanese and,

Maartje (23:05)
Yes.

No

Sam (23:21)
debasing himself. He’s willing to do it because he’s like, yeah, that’s just what life is like here. That’s what I know.

During a P-51 Mustang attack on the nearby airfield, Jim runs up to one of the roofs to observe Dr. Rollins, played by Nigel Havers, who’s been teaching him and keeping an eye on him. He’s kind of like a father figure. He’s essentially one of the only adult characters in the film who actually seems like they are well intentioned. He comes up to bring Jim down to safety. And in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness that reminds us how young he still is.

Maartje (23:45)
Yeah.

Sam (23:52)
Jim tearfully explains that he can’t remember what his parents look like.

Maartje (23:55)
yeah, this made me sad because at first he’s so happy to see the P-51 Mustangs and he’s like, Cadilacs of the sky! He’s very excited. And so was I. And then it’s because you think, ⁓ this boy just loves aviation so much. And then all of a sudden it’s like, no, wait a second, he’s still a kid and he’s still sad and he misses his parents.

And I like this moment. don’t know what I think about Christian Bale’s acting in this actually. I think it’s good. I just think it’s annoying.

Sam (24:20)
Yeah.

Well, kids might be a little annoying in that context.

and as childlike as his loss of control over his emotions, or maybe this coaster of emotions that he’s going through is, also it’s so adult and serious to have been torn away from your family. Like he’s dealing with something that no child should have to go through and that many kids won’t have to go through, and he’s just doing his best.

Maartje (24:50)
Yeah.

Yeah, and another thing that you kind of can read between the lines is that he’s constantly looking for figure and a mother figure and the other prisoners. So, while you don’t see him until this point, you don’t see him his parents or missing his parents. If you read between the lines, you can tell that he misses them.

Sam (25:10)
Yeah, and Book Jim, he loves to read, so he’s always scrounging for copies of Reader’s Digest, magazines, whatever he can get his hands on in the camp. And he finds a picture of a couple standing outside of Buckingham Palace in one of the magazines, and they look sort of like his parents, maybe a little bit from far away, if you squint. So he cuts that picture out and he puts it up on his wall because he doesn’t have a picture of his parents, and that’s his…

connection to his life before. He doesn’t want to forget that that also exists.

Maartje (25:40)
That is interesting because there is a picture that he brings with him from one place of sleep to the other and it’s… I can’t tell what the picture is but maybe that’s supposed to be a similar type of picture. He gets it, I think, from a live magazine that he got from Basie at some point. There are other children…

in the camp as well, but he doesn’t really connect to any of those. So I thought that was an interesting choice as well, he’s constantly only talking to the adults.

Sam (26:11)
Yeah, and you do get the sense in the book that he is very isolated from everyone else in as much as he is an intrinsic part of the fabric of this camp life. also, he feels alone. He’s very much like he’s coming of age in isolation.

Maartje (26:29)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, for sure. He also doesn’t get to be a kid at all. Like he’s immediately just like pulled dailies of the camp and you don’t ever really see him play with his planes anymore. So I feel like he’s had to grow up too quickly almost.

So Basie and some other Americans have been planning an escape from the camp when the time is right and Basie has promised Jim that he will take him with him but then he learns one morning that Basie is left without him and he’s He’s not the only one who’s been left behind. So is Frank who he’s not really friendly with but yeah so he’s not the only one.

tells you that Basie just does whatever the f*** he wants for himself and Julie’s devastated and the Japanese start to evacuate the camp and take the remaining prisoners on the death march which is brutal

Sam (27:24)
Yeah, when he describes it in the book, he describes it they leave the camp, all of the prisoners pack of of their life, I guess. A lot of these people, when they came to the camp in, you know, 1941, 1942, they had tennis rackets and just like croquet mallets, things that…

retrospect probably didn’t make a lot of sense and when they were to pack up and leave the camp they brought all that stuff with them again as if they thought you know maybe we’ll go back and we’ll just go back to our ordinary lives and then as they’re walking along the road they start dropping like flies because they don’t have any food and so he just describes looking across the road and there’s just you know just a random tennis racket here and like a random pair of golf shoes over there and just this like debris of this vanished life.

Maartje (27:59)
Mm.

Yes, and he takes it all in stride, there at least in a movie. It’s just another day in camp life for Jim which I thought was kind of touching in a way.

Sam (28:23)
They arrive at Nanto Stadium and it’s kind of eerie because they come in and that’s where the Japanese have been storing all of the stuff that they looted from the international settlement. So Jim sees his parents, fancy car in there, a white piano, all these things that he described to Basie as being the trappings of wealth, like, there’s a white piano, there’s a crystal chandelier. This is where all these things ended up.

And it’s just so odd to see them laid out in a sports stadium like that. so unfortunately here, many of the prisoners die of disease and starvation. And this is where Jim witnesses or thinks he witnesses the flash of the atomic bomb at Nagasaki. And he initially believes it is the soul of his fellow prisoner, Mrs. Victor, played by Miranda Richardson, going to heaven in the absence of other options. And because he doesn’t know anything else.

Jim returns to the camp, the only place he has known to be safe since the war started.

Maartje (29:18)
And this is also where cycles around the camp again, which reflects what you said at the beginning, that the camp kind of feels like home, because he also did that in his house. So that I found really touching to see him cycle around the camp, not knowing whether or not he would be saved. And can we talk briefly about Miranda Richardson in this? She’s so… Her character is so odd.

And there’s also an out moment where it’s at night, and Jim is in his bunk next to Mrs. Victor and her husband, and he’s watching them have sex, and it’s weird.

Sam (29:55)
like that exact thing doesn’t happen in the book, but you can tell that Jim has a little bit of a yen for Mrs. Victor, I guess we’ll call it. And I think it’s part of the coming of age thing where it’s like, yeah, you have a teenage boy who isn’t meeting girls at school or in any of the normal contexts, he just lives with adult woman. so he has like, he’s getting confused signals, I guess, a little bit.

Maartje (30:04)
⁓

Ha!

Yep. And I guess that’s also why he stays with her in the stadium. Even though another older man that knows him from before, think even, says, if you stay here you will die and he doesn’t mind, he just stays.

Sam (30:35)
referenced the atomic bomb in this movie as like the loss of mankind’s innocence alongside Jim’s loss of innocence. in the book, Ballard talks quite a lot about war is over, but the next war is beginning. Jim is convinced that as soon as World War II is over, World War III is starting.

While that’s a child’s innocent take on how the world works, he’s also not really Ballard describes World War III having begun on an installment plan in about 1945. Basically, as soon as the atomic bomb was dropped, it started a countdown clock until World War III and humankind annihilating itself. just thought that was a super interesting theme to touch on in a novel about a child.

Maartje (31:18)
Jim learns via radio that the war has ended. At the airfield next to the camp, he’s reunited with his pilot friend, who’s bitterly disappointed because his plane died. And it’s preventing him from fulfilling his duty as a kamikaze pilot. We see this a couple times, I think two or three times that they are sending pilots off.

And offers him a mango because they are friends.

Sam (31:43)
in the book, they talk a lot more about how hungry everyone is all the time. So being offered the mangoes are pretty big deal. Jim is like, fuck yeah, a mango.

Basie and his fellow camp escapees have become a roving group of bandits in the lawless land outside of Shanghai, and they happen to be passing by to pick up air dropped supplies that the Americans are dropping for allied POWs and internees. They believe that the Japanese pilot is going to hurt Jim, so one of them shoots him, and that’s the last straw for Jim. He loses it, he attacks the bandit who shot his friend.

Maartje (32:17)
And he also tries to revive his friend because thinks he knows how to do CPR and he does manage to anyone. so

Sam (32:26)
And it’s part of this whole thing about how you can never go back. Like his life will never be the way it was. It’s this whole thing where he thinks that he can bring people back. In the book he talks about, he’s like, I’m going to bring Mrs. Victor back. I’m going to bring back the British people in the hospital. I’m going to bring back these people and that people or whatever. And he’s convinced that he can turn back time and make things the way that they were. But of course,

As we see, he’s not able to save the pilot and he won’t be able to change the world back to the way it was before.

Maartje (32:57)
No, and one of Basie’s crew is actually Ben Stiller. And I almost missed him because I didn’t recognise him immediately when I saw him the first time. I was like, wait, hang on, go back a little bit. Is that Ben Stiller? And yes it is. I thought that was interesting because he’s obviously he’s got such a distinctive look as he gets older, but in this movie he doesn’t look quite as distinctive yet.

Sam (33:21)
He’s playing a soldier named Dainty, which I enjoyed as well.

Maartje (33:24)
Yeah.

Jim opts to stay behind when Basie and the others leave and he eventually encounters American troops. This was so weird and funny, I thought, him encountering the Americans. It was so almost like cartoony to me. along with a lot of other children, he gets returned to civilization and

That’s when his parents find him, who are still alive. They were injured at another camp, but they survived. And he barely recognizes them, as he said before he couldn’t remember his mother’s face. And it’s very have been irrevocably changed. And the movie closes on the coffins in the river again.

Sam (34:05)
Yeah, in real life, Ballard returns to England after the war. He went to school and says that that experience really made him feel cut off from his past. He had never been to England. He was born in Shanghai. He lived there all his life. So going to England, he felt like he was dropped into this oddly quiet pastoral life that bore little resemblance to everything that he knew. He’d seen a world, a civilization collapse, but

England was still rolling along with its same old class system and values firmly in place. And he describes it as if he had written the book right after the war, it would have been, quote unquote, a scream of rage. And he often points out in interviews that I’ve read that the things he experienced in Shanghai are commonplace to those who live less privileged lives than those in England. So he’s like, yeah, I saw the whole world fall apart around me. That happens a lot to kids who grow up in.

Africa, South America, Asia, other places where, you know, violent conflict and starvation and disease is not as unusual.

Maartje (35:05)
Yeah, it’s interesting to me that-

you mentioned that he goes back to England and he’s never been there because obviously that’s the same thing for Jim. He’s never actually been to England and they ask him what he’s gonna do in England even and he’s like I don’t know I’ve never been I guess in a way would have been a blessing to a child right to be able to escape that violent past so cleanly.

Sam (35:31)
That’s right, he gets to leave and the kids who are Chinese have to stay there and pick up the pieces.

Maartje (35:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, I thought, by the way, and this is a quick recall from something in the very, like, first maybe 10 minutes of the movie, I was sure that we were going to see there’s a man outside their home, for change with a tin can, and I was sure that we were going to see him again somewhere, but we don’t.

Sam (36:01)
Ballard describes that in his that there was a man, a homeless man who used to live at the end of their driveway. And one day the chauffeur ran over this guy’s foot tire tracks on this guy’s ankle. And I guess it’s meant to be indicative boundary wall around the estate that he lives on is such a harsh dividing line between

you know, the outside world and the kind of existence that he lives. And he talks about how anytime they would go into actual Shanghai, every 20 meters, you’d see a body lying on the road. There was constantly, that would come around and just pick up the bodies of people who had died of poverty and starvation. And it was just seen as really normal and commonplace.

Maartje (36:42)
Yeah, difficult to imagine, isn’t it, if you live in the West like we do. We’re lucky.

I suppose.

One more thing before we get to the end and end of the movie. I wanna know from the book, is there as much of an obsession with shoes as there is in the movie?

Sam (37:00)
Yeah, I mean the golf shoes that he’s wearing in the camp are from the book. They’re his most prized possession because they’re fancy and shiny and new even if they’re not very practical.

Maartje (37:05)
Yeah.

I mean, he even gets shoes for their Japanese commander in the camp, like he kind of trades up and down to get the commander some shoes. And then, like, feel like shoes are just everywhere in this movie for some reason. His own shoes get stolen. And, I don’t know, I thought it was interesting to have to see shoes as a focal point for this boy.

I can’t relate because I can only ever wear the same shoes, but, you know, maybe it’ll be like that meme. my god shoes.

Sam (37:41)
Yeah.

Maartje (37:43)
Anyway, that’s the end of the movie. But you have some notes.

Sam (37:54)
we’ve discussed in previous episodes, the Japanese forces were especially brutal towards Chinese civilians. So we’ve talked about the rape of Nanjing in 1937, Japanese maimed and mutilated and cut and raped their way across a major city in China. It was just a brutal slaughter. Rape was used as a weapon of war, and this was quite commonplace.

In China, the war against Japanese occupation is referred to as the War of Resistance, during which at least 20 million people died. yeah, and really, a lot of people think of World War Two was starting in 1939, but really, World War Two started in 1937 when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. But yeah, so effectively, there were two components to the official Chinese opposition to the Japanese.

Maartje (38:23)
20 million. Holy shit.

Sam (38:42)
There was the Kuomintang or KMT and they were Chinese nationalist forces led by the authoritarian military commander Chiang Kai-shek. And they engaged in more traditional warfare. They were the official state, so they were the ones who were tying up the Japanese in what we would probably think of when we think of a battle, while the communist forces were led by revolutionary Mao Zedong and they were fighting more of a guerrilla type war. The two sides temporarily formed the United Front.

to fight the Japanese, though they continued to clash and fight one another. though the recognized the KMT as the legitimate government of China at the end of the war, the civil war between the two groups continued and World War II really devastated China as a country, which weakened the government and there was a resulting communist victory in 1949.

Maartje (39:29)
Aha. Another thing I’ve learned today. I feel like this whole podcast, especially like the past maybe 10 to 15 episodes, we’ve just been covering so much new stuff for me that I feel really just privileged to be able to learn so much at 38.

Sam (39:48)
I feel like it’s really been put into focus for me that World War II was such a almost like a hinge point of history, you know, where like so many things were irrevocably changed in the wake of it, including as we’ve been discussing, you know, a lot of Asian countries had the foundation of their independence set during World War

The war in Vietnam might not have happened if it hadn’t been for World War II. the war in Korea wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for World War II. And obviously it had long term impacts for the country of China as well, which is, you know, the root of a lot of what we’re seeing today. So, yeah, I just I’m always so interested to see how far back the roots of history go, you know, and how much they’re tangled up with everything else.

Maartje (40:35)
I feel more aware of the present day even, just learning about history so much. And history isn’t really history, it’s just kind context for what’s happening today. It’s interesting.

do have to rate this movie, but before we I’d like to remind you that you can find us wherever you get your podcast, and you can also send this episode to a friend.

Sam (41:00)
every time you send this episode to a friend, it’s like sending them a mango. And everyone knows, fuck yeah mangoes.

Maartje (41:06)
Exactly, I would like a mango please. So, shall we rate this movie… of the Sky out of 10?

Sam (41:13)
of the sky of ten would you rate this movie?

Maartje (41:16)
I would probably rate it 8 Cadilacs of the sky out of 10. I really enjoyed it. I found myself not at all distracted by other things while watching the movie, which is always a good sign. I liked most of the adult actors in this. I also liked Christian Bale, but the character was just a bit annoying, so that’s not his fault.

I like the really narrow points of view that we got. I don’t know, I just, I kind of enjoyed all of it, to be honest. I don’t really have that much to say against it. So that’s why. How about you?

Sam (41:50)
Yeah, I liked it too. And it gave me the opportunity to read the book, which I did think kicked a lot of ass. I saw lot of the reviews on it were saying that it’s one of the best novels to come out of World War II. And honestly, I have to agree. It’s so interesting how as it goes loses touch a little more with reality and the way things are described become really kind of like vivid and a little bit trippy maybe.

I thought that the movie adapted that pretty well, probably as well as it could have. I also agree that I thought John Malkovich was good. Hilarious to see Ben Stiller. Just funny. He just feels out of place in a war movie, you know? I’m like, Ben Stiller didn’t fight a world war. Get out of here. But yeah, broadly, good movie. Would recommend.

Maartje (42:25)
you

He does.

How many?

Sam (42:34)
yeah, fuck, keep doing this. I’m gonna give it…

Maartje (42:35)
You

Sam (42:38)
7.8 Cadillacs in the sky out of 10.

Maartje (42:40)
Perfect, that was good. Are you reading anything new this week?

Sam (42:45)
No, I’m not. Too much studying to do.

Maartje (42:47)
Taking a break, that’s good. I’m also, I’m reading the same thing as I was last week, so we’re just skipping the reading today. No more reading for us.

Sam (42:56)
Yeah, I’m busy. I’m reading too much school stuff. Who was the time?

Maartje (42:58)
HNNNN

Yeah,

I mean, it serves a purpose and you did just get to read a really good book, so it’s nice.

Sam (43:09)
It’s true, I get to savor it now, you know, I get to think about it. what will happen, because I just finished it, like last night, is that a few days from now I’ll be like, man, I have so many deep and interesting thoughts about these themes.

Maartje (43:21)
know what you can do? We can do a little tiny bit of extra recording on this book, and then I’ll give you a little teaser of the one, because this summer we will be starting a Patreon. With lots of cool stuff. So this kind of stuff could be on there.

Sam (43:35)
That’s true.

Maartje (43:37)
up for the week then. Thank you everybody for listening. You can find this wherever you get your podcast. I made this 5 stars. You can send this episode to a friend. You can follow us on Instagram at RosyTheReviewerPodcast. Or you can visit our website, rosydewerviewer.com for more info. And we’ll see you next week. Bye!

Sam (43:58)
Bye.