Year Released: 1987
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Joe Pantoliano, Nigel Havers, Amanda Richardson
(PG, 152 min.)
Genre: War Epic, Drama

“It's at the beginning and end of war that we have to watch out. In between, it's like a country club.” –John Malkovich, (Basie)

Steven Spielberg reimagines war –its tragic irony, chaos and confusion –through the eyes of a young English boy in Shanghai who lives through the Japanese invasion and occupation of that British colony.

Perhaps Spielberg’s best yet most underrated film, and a truly exceptional performance by 13-year-old Christian Bale in the lead role. He goes from being a somewhat spoiled child to a spunky survivor, whose pastiche of shifting hero worship and then genuine love for both sides shocks the audience into a new reality.

The sweeping epic owes much of its impact to the contrasting worlds it paints on screen. Witness the opening, where a voice over indicates that the British have made parts of colonial Shanghai into exact replicas of England. That follows with an all boys church choir, one that might as well be London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. Its Welsh song Suo Gan is pure and beautiful, even if that clear voice is dubbed and not Christian Bale himself. (One person could not have that much talent in a single body.)

Of course that opening is complemented by the very English estate where young Jamie (Christian Bale) lives among green lawns, massive rooms, chandeliers, fountains, and even a swimming pool. The only incongruity is instead of the stiff upper-lipped servants aka Downtown Abbey, we have a distinctly Chinese staff.

Then there is a very elegant costumed Ball – certainly a staple of the British Empire – that Jamie and his family attend. Of course, there is the little problem of the starving Chinese masses crowding around their polished black limousine, making their trip to a neighboring estate almost like trying to get around in present day Portland, Oregon.

The fact that the masses are trying to break through estate’s gated entry merely to eat any of the scraps left behind from the decadent affair seems lost on little Jamie, who seems more enthralled with his miniature airplane than the great unwashed teeming uncomfortably close by, and it doesn’t appear to register very much with his parents, either, decked out as they are as pirates, turbaned sultans, clowns, or other exotics.

The great unwashed are kept at bay, but not the invading Japanese, and Jamie, later on separated from his parents, somehow makes it home hoping to reunite with them.

The scenes of him waiting there for them are a kaleidoscope of excitement, shock, fear, and finally desperation. Certainly there is the freedom of riding his bike indoors, careening through the kitchen, but somehow dulled by witnessing the former staff walking away with the family antiques. An imperious Jamie tries to stop it, but the same servant who had to take his insults before now leaves him with a resounding slap to his face and a look of utter contempt she had kept well-hidden just weeks ago.

All this irony and class conflict is crafted by the great Tom Stoppard, who wrote the screenplay based on J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel.

The same Tom Stoppard who penned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, where Hamlet is retold from the point of view of “two blokes” who innocently get sucked into a vortex of murder and revenge. It fascinated my English class of high school seniors as well as their teacher (me).

We see this desperation again as a starving Jamie, unable to surrender to the Japanese troops, who treat him with the same contempt his former Chinese servants have, finds succor, or something faintly resembling it, in the hands of two reprobates trying to survive as well.

John Malkovich, playing the rogue Basie in one of his best performances, examines Jamie like a savvy buyer checking out a horse. It’s Jamie’s teeth that he admires, so clean and white. Maybe the boy is worth something to him and Frank (Joe Pantoliano), and after allowing him to share some meager rice with perhaps a hint some questionable protein, they plan on selling him off.

Here we start to see a different Jamie, whom they now rename Jim, come into the picture. He is learning survival techniques himself, even if his first attempt, taking them back to the family home where they too can seize some of the good stuff inside, lands them all in the Soo Chow Creek Internment Camp for Foreign Civilians in North China.

Once there Jim soon becomes almost as roguish as they, bartering the meager treasure there as we see him again near the end of the war:

Jim has etched out a considerably active life for himself involving an intricate trade network among the other British prisoners and even Nagata himself, who has since been invested as the commanding officer of the camp. While dropping off Nagata's freshly polished boots, Jim slyly steals a bar of soap from the sergeant…

And he meets some distinctly unroguish fellow prisoners, as well, one being the idealistic camp Doctor Rawlins (Nigel Havers), who schools Jim in Latin and poetry as well as perhaps a sense of ethics.

We also meet a young Kamitkase pilot in training in the adjacent airfield under construction. The young pilot, perhaps just a handful of years older then Jim, now in his mid teens, shares Jim’s love for airplanes, running along with his own small model just as we had seen Jim do earlier in Shanghai. When it lands on Jim’s side of the barbed wire, he returns it, and the bond of flyboys that seems to know no nationality is formed immediately.

Later that same bond will save one death and cause another.

Also in the camp is a gracious English couple who take in Jim in the British part of the prison. Miranda Richardson plays Pani Victor, evolving like Jim. At first she is vain and beautiful, as her husband is in a much more limited way with his two-toned precious pair of golf shoes, which he carries over his shoulders as an emblem of returning to the good life that has been wretched from them. Combing her beautiful hair and donning lipstick soon gives way to Mrs. Victor scrounging for enough food to keep alive.

Nonetheless, these stoic English seem dull to Jim, and he works to weasel himself into the American quarters of the camp where Basie holds court all in white, a sort of skinny Boss Hog without the Southern accent or pretensions. That same power is there, though.

***

However, our tale is less a war story than one of a young boy coming of age, and a very rushed coming of age, at that.

We first see that in some of Jim’s very frank and outrageous observations:

Jim: I was dreaming about God.
Mary Graham, Jim's mother: What did he say?
Jim: Nothing. He was playing tennis.”

Jim: Perhaps that's where God is all the time and that's why you can't see Him when you're awake, do you think?
Mary Graham, Jim's mother: I don't know. I don't know about God.
Jim: Perhaps He's our dream…and we're His.

Basie: Jim, didn't I teach you anything?
Jim: Yes! You taught me that people will do anything... for a potato.”

Jim: Learned a new word today. "Atom bomb". It was like God taking a photograph.

***

Jim sees things no boy should have to witness, and he shifts allegiances to suit his fancy. Perhaps that is because he has never really known who he is. We see all that in this video as Jim runs out to see the Allied bombers strafing the airfield next to the camp:

•••

This is not the schmaltzy Spielberg we sometimes see; it is a film unburdened by sentimentality. It is innocence lost, a sudden exile from Eden that is the curse of man’s time on this earth.

Watch it just to see the amazing and subtle talent Christian Bale shows at such an early age, perhaps one the of best performances ever by a child actor, if I may use that jaded term.

But also watch it to see if you agree with me that this superb film is up there with the very best, filled with beautiful and stark images that will stay with you forever.

It stands the test of time, and like a fine wine, only gets better as it ages. Not to miss.

–Kathy Borich
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

Our initial image of the innocent clear-voiced Jamie (later called Jim) singing in the Cathedral choir is erased by his youthful arrogance. He demands his Chinese servant bake him some Butter Biscuits. It is close to bedtime and she reminds him that his mother has forbidden them late at night.

Earning her undying rancor, Jamie tells her that he is in charge. That she must obey him, little oblivious tyrant that he is. This scene is crucial because it marks the privileged bubble that Jamie shares with most of the wealthy British living in Shanghai at that time, just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It will take near starvation to strip Jamie of his arrogance. And before he knows it, he will be bolting down rice like a dog on the street, or scavenging for a mere potato or pair of shoes. And his pretentious “Jamie” is soon amended to plain old “Jim,” too.

Ironic, too, that after he runs out of real food at his abandoned home, he subsists on little liquor-filled-foil-wrapped-chocolates. Sweet, decadent and insubstantial, just like the life he had been living.

But let’s be a bit spoiled ourselves, and bake up a few of these biscuits, which is really the English and European word for what we Yanks call cookies.

Of course, we are doing this because we want to, not because a little English brat has ordered us to!

Enjoy.

Butter Biscuits

Ingredients

· 227 g (2 sticks) butter

· 85 g (1/3 c) sugar

· 1 egg

· 454 g (3 cups) all purpose flour

· 255 g (2 cups) confectioner's sugar

· candied/Glacé cherries, to decorate

· raspberry jam

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400˚F (200˚C)

1. Mix the butter and sugar together until it forms a homogenous mixture. Add the egg and mix well. Next add the flour until it forms a crumbly consistency.

2. Turn onto a floured surface and form into a smooth dough. Do not overwork the dough. Roll out quite thinly (about 1/8") and cut into rounds with a cookie cutter.

3. Place on lined baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes (I turn them once through baking). Put on cooling rack. Then, when completely cool, choose a mate for each cookie.

4. Coat the tops with confectioner's sugar mixed with milk or water (to a thick, but runny consistency as in the photo below).

5. Top with a piece of candied cherry in the center, then sandwich together cookies with raspberry jam and enjoy with a cup of tea!

Christinas Cucina.com