My thoughts on the movie 'The empire of the sun'

 After watching a part of the movie ‘The empire of the sun’, I thought that the surrounding environment can change the people’s living style, but it’s difficult to change the fundamental element of one person. Jamie, which is a wealthy British boy, lives in China during Sino-Japanese war. He’s family is very rich and in high social class, which is easily noticed by the number of servants, the size of the house, and the culture they enjoy.

 In the first part of the movie, there is a scene which Jamie’s family rides a car through the Chinese crowd. Jamie’s family is dressed in a Halloween uniform and rides a fancy car, which the driver and other servants make the way. But, outside the car, the Chinese people are dressed in filthy clothes and sells foods and other miscellaneous product in a dirty street. The window of the car is the only thing which segregates them physically, but it’s the thing which allows two groups of people to see each other. In this scene it’s easy to notice that the ‘high class’ people and ‘low class’ people are segregated, therefore not easy to understand or experience other group’s lifestyle.

 When the war breaks out, the high class people at the hotel starts to run away from the Japanese soldiers. One funny thing is that the high class people are calling out for taxi, even though there is no taxi and the Japanese soldiers are marching. So, it’s possible to know that the high class people were too segregated from the normal people, and they do not realize the reality. Jamie is basically the same with these kind of high class people in the first part, so he talks and acts in that way, not realizing the reality. So he is put into various incidents and eventually imprisoned in a warehouse along with other westerners.

 But, Jamie tries to go with the leaving truck, which ahead for the concentration camp. After few months of concentration camp experience, Jamie’s mind drastically changes in order that his high-class mind and behavior changes into a opportunistic characteristic which is beneficial in the concentration camp. Even though he is in such camp, his passion for the plane still remains.

 After watching until this part of the movie, my emotion for Jamie changed. Actually in the first part of the movie, I was pretty much annoyed by Jamie’s selfish and rude behaviors. But as timeline goes on and Jamie adapts the current situation and lives well, although he is in a poor-living place, the concentration camp. Although he doesn’t realize the hard situation fully, this feature gives the movie a bright image. Most of the times, the concentration camp is shown as a dreadful place, but due to Jamie’s pure and immature mind and behavior, he can make his own life in the camp more lively. This resembles me of the case of ‘girl scouts’ in the same war(but in real case), which made their life in concentration camp cheerful.