Empire of the Sun: Plot, Scenes, and Historical Accuracy

Table of Contents

Introduction
Main body
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Empire of the Sun is an adventure film released in 1987, directed by Steven Spielberg. Its cast includes Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson, Nigel Havers etc. The action revolves around a privileged English boy, Jamie Graham, surviving during Japanese invasion of Shanghai. Although this movie is based on historical events, and it is possible to call it partially historically accurate, it remains a fiction film with a strong bias of directors approach.

Main body

Within the movie, Spielberg creates a narrative of a young privileged boy getting trapped in terrible circumstances of invasion of Shanghai. It presents an evident link to the historical progression of World War II, which partly justifies the movies relevance to the history. However, at the same time the director explores the topic of clashing innocence and colonial violence through the fictional narrative, and expresses the death of protagonists innocence through his denial of violence around (Wood, 2019). This way, despite creating an historical setting around the character, Spielberg explores a wider topic related to the surroundings, which creates a careful balance between fiction and accuracy in the film. At last, while portraying the cruelties of the war, Spielberg leaves space for hope, as the protagonist reunites with his family after the challenges he had been through. It states that colonial violence killed solely selfish part of childish innocence (Wood, 2019), and links to the aspect of fiction of this movie, paralleling it with thousands other stories that ended on a happier note.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, this movie does portray the cruelties of war and historically accurate aspects of 1940s related to Japanese invasion. However, at the same time it holds a solid part of fiction within the storytelling, and focuses on exploration of wider topics. This way, despite being partially historically relevant, Empire of the Sun could not be an accurate representation of historical events, as a big part of the story is fiction, which resolves around the protagonist.