Born and raised in the Shanghai International Settlement, a foreign-controlled part of Japan where residents lived an “American way of life”, J.G Ballard’s Empire Of The Sun was written as a way of documenting the author’s childhood memories of the outbreak of World War 2.
Interned with his parents by Japanese forces after the attack on Pearl Harbour, Ballard was profoundly marked by his wartime experiences, but it would take some 40 years before he could find the words to adequately do them justice on the page.
“How do you convey the casual surrealism of war?” he would go on to muse in an article written for The Guardian back in 2006.
“The deep silence of abandoned villages and paddy fields, the strange normality of a dead Japanese soldier lying by the road like an unwanted piece of luggage?”
The novel was eventually published in 1984, with Ballard drawing from his experiences and placing them within a fictionalised framework that necessitated the removal of his parents from the story.
“My mind was expanding to fill the possibilities of the war,” he explains, “something I needed to do on my own. Once I separated Jim from his parents the novel unrolled itself at my feet like a bullet-ridden carpet.”
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Comments
Jareth64
Oct 18th 2012, 11:04
It's a forgotten gem. A brilliant film.
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kittycati
Oct 18th 2012, 11:24
I remember seeing this movie as a child...it still loved it the next time I watched it as an adult 20 years later. Not many films can do that.
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SiMan
Oct 18th 2012, 12:27
Watched it a few years back and although i remember liking it, i have to say it didn't leave much of an impact with me. Can't remember much from it. Think i'll have to give it another go soon.
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licantro
Oct 18th 2012, 13:17
This was the film that introduced me to Drama for the first time when I was just a kid, a step in growing up and because of that I remember it fondly. The way it was filmed and the way it was told it was captivating and shockingly emotional. Being 12 years old and now 35 probably helped me to understand it better since the view of war was through the eyes of also a kid, who now is such a prominent actor, Christian Bale. It's so amusing to see how Spielberg has always been so good storytelling from a kids points of view. An amazing film.
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Hadouken76
Oct 18th 2012, 18:08
Another Spielberg and Bale film please.
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