Figure 1.--" |
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This is a very well acted film. There are not a lot of well-known actors. The best known was the actor who played Jim. Jim is played by 13-year old Christian Bale. He handles the 11-year old role at the beginning well, but is not a very believable 15-year old at the end of the movie. A HBC reader is more impressed with Bale's performance. "I disagree with one of the comments about Christian Bale's performance not being very believable as a 15 year old. At 15 I was not very big and still had my treble singing voice. Some kids mature at a slower pace. What made the performance work was the change in his character's attitudes, confidence, and relationships with others, especially grown-ups. That made the wonderful scene where he sings to the Kamikaze pilots especially moving as although he is older and "wiser", he still retains some of the child that arrived at the camp over 3 years earlier. That whole scene illustrates Spielberg's brilliance as a director; quiet,
loud (the air raid) and quiet (when Jim becomes delirious) to the final shot of the table with the glasses and the smoke from the raid in the background. Spielberg also created that wonderful transition of the changes in Jim's character in the scene where you see Jim saluting the Pilots in his school uniform, a fade to black, then you see Jim again and how he has changed (haircut, clothes and the sunken, hollow look on his face). Absolutely
brilliant film making. Jim's clothing also reflected his change from a schoolboy (school uniform) to a camp survivor (first in khaki shorts with no socks and pilot jacket
to a pilot coverall uniform, making him more American looking). I also noticed that the more he was away from his parents the grubber he looked in his school uniform and how he wore his socks pushed down all of the time. Overall I think this is one of Spielberg's best films, one that has been sadly neglected. I think that Christian Bale gave one of the great child
performances of all time, proving again, Steven Spielberg's gift for directing children."
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