Empire of the Sun

David Lean was to direct Steven Spielberg’s film first, with Spielberg attached as producer. Lean worked on it about a year and gave it up, saying it read too much like a diary. Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay. The awards record has an odd symmetry. At the 60th Academy Awards the film took six nominations and converted none: Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Original Score and Sound. All six went to The Last Emperor. At the 42nd BAFTA ceremony the same two films met again and the result inverted: Allen Daviau won Cinematography, John Williams won Original Music, and Sound went to this film too. Its three wins made it the night’s joint biggest winner with The Last Emperor. Talks with the Chinese authorities ran about a year before a three week Shanghai shoot was permitted in March 1987. More than 5,000 local extras were used, and soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army played the Japanese army. The boy’s voice in Suo Gan, the Welsh lullaby that opens the film, is not Christian Bale’s: the soloist is James Rainbird, with the Ambrosian Junior Choir. A good fit if you accept the war seen through a child’s enthusiasm for aircraft. Not for anyone who avoids scenes of children meeting death and starvation; the film does not shy from them.