Empire of the Sun

Selected by the Producers Branch.
Free for Museum Members.

Christian Bale gave a remarkable performance at age 12 as Jamie “Jim” Graham, a British boy separated from his parents who spends World War II in a Japanese internment camp in Steven Spielberg’s epic, visually stunning film of J. G. Ballard’s autobiographical novel. Spielberg, who produced with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, filmed in Spain and Shanghai as well as England, staging the kind of spectacular, real-life cast-of-thousands scenes that have since virtually disappeared from Hollywood filmmaking. The film earned six Oscar nominations for Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Sound, and Original Score (John Williams).