The WWII thread got me thinking. This film is one of Spielberg's one of the most under appreciated films. I have seen 4-5 times in various stags of life, but I don't think it resonated with me until I had my son. I saw it a couple of weeks ago and my son is 8 almost 9. He is the same age as Christian Bale was in the film. It is different watching as a parent that as a a young teen, in my 20's and now in my 40's. I never grasped the final scene of the movie until just a couple of weeks ago, because I don't remember tearing up with the scene before
It's definitely different as a parent than as a young adult or teen. I appreciated the final scene as a young person but personal experience as a mother or father does change the vibe a bit. I'll never be able to wrap my brain around what the adults in that world went through in situations similar to that.
That ending sequence you refer to was always an emotional one for me, even when I first saw this in the theater in '87 while I was at A&M. Now my own childhood was nothing like young Jim's, but my parents did divorce when I was in 2nd grade, so I recall lots of fears about where we would all end up, would my mom abandon me, what would happen to my dad, stuff like that. So that idea of being separated from your family for all those years, and then not even remembering what they looked like ... yikes.
I read the book shortly after the movie came out, and I recall an interview with the author who claimed that Spielberg "had it easy" in depicting some of the stuff you see on screen as opposed to the writer, who I believe based the story on his own WWII experience, had in creating those scenes through words.
This movie is in Spielberg's wheelhouse - WWII. Consider the number of movies he has made set in or related in some fashion to that war: 1941, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (heck, even the romance fire fighter movie, Always, features WWII aircraft and dialogue that feels more at home in the '40s than '80s). I figure it's because of his life-long fascination with the war, and him making 8mm war movies when he was a teen, it just resonates with him.
As a life-long warbird nut, these scenes were just so awesome:
I also loved the brief B-29 raid against the POW camp.
This movie also features some of John Williams' best work.
. . . heck, even the romance fire fighter movie, Always, features WWII aircraft and dialogue that feels more at home in the '40s than '80s . . .
Possibly because it is a remake of the 1943 film A Guy Named Joe. It has been a long time since I've seen either movie to remember exact details but the similarities between the two are enough that the first time a watched A Guy Named Joe I immediately recalled Always. Side note, Always was Audrey Hepburn's last film.
A Guy Named Joe was on TCM one night this year. I stopped on a scene where the kids who live near the base were running around holding toy airplanes up in the air. It reminded me of a scene w/ Bale in Empire of the Sun. I figured Spielberg had to have seen that so I looked up the movie and realized he not only had seen the movie, of course, he had remade it as Always - 2 years after Empire of the Sun.
Back to the OP, Empire is a great movie that has different significances at different ages.
. . . heck, even the romance fire fighter movie, Always, features WWII aircraft and dialogue that feels more at home in the '40s than '80s . . .
Possibly because it is a remake of the 1943 film A Guy Named Joe. It has been a long time since I've seen either movie to remember exact details but the similarities between the two are enough that the first time a watched A Guy Named Joe I immediately recalled Always. Side note, Always was Audrey Hepburn's last film.
Yep. I hunted that movie down (kinda tough to do way back in 1989 since there was no Amazon Prime or Netflix) after seeing Always (which I actually enjoyed for the most part).
