Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun—based on author J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel—stars Christian Bale as Jim, a spoiled young British boy living with his wealthy family in pre-World War II Shanghai. During the Japanese invasion, Jim is separated from his parents and imprisoned in an internment camp. With the often conflicting guidance of a self-centered soldier-of-fortune Basie (John Malkovich) and a caring British doctor (Nigel Havers), Jim learns to survive the war without a retinue of servants at his beck and call.

Empire of the Sun was the first film by a western production company to film in Shanghai since World War II. With sweeping vistas of a city under siege, a terrifying set piece of a young boy being separated from his parents in the crush of a panicked, churning crowd, and the considerable complexities of bringing a sizable crew and the apparatus of a major production to a world previously unseen in Hollywood filmmaking, the film is a contrast of scale with moments both grand and intimate.

Featuring a preternaturally sensitive and emotionally insightful performance by so young an actor—Bale, in his first starring role and appearing in nearly every scene in the film, was only 12 years of age at the time of production—we see Jim transform from a selfish child of privilege to a young man who has suffered the horrors and deprivations of war. The film, and Bale’s performance, are an elegy to a childhood not only lost, but torn violently away from young Jim’s very soul.