Événement

THE SUN

(aka SOLNTSE)
2005. 115 minutes.
In English and Japanese (with English subtitles)

Awash in the same deathlike anomie as its predecessors, THE SUN nevertheless diverges here: at the close of World War II, Emperor Hirohito (Issey Ogata, in a performance of staggering understatement) stands at a far bigger historical precipice than Sokurov's of Hitler or Lenin. In its devastating autopsy of Japan's surrender to the United States in 1945, THE SUN seizes on rendering historical footnote-moments (if that) of excruciating detail and plays them out long and slow, the filmmaker's bizarre cinematography giving the images an intimate murk. In charting the course of Hirohito's decision to capitulate to his American occupiers, the film becomes about open vs. closed spaces, and languages in conflict.

While drawing a close on Japan's imperial ambitions (until now?), this Hirohito is an introspective man trapped within the bric-a-brac of his own upbringing - there are times THE SUN appears less to be about him than about life under what the occupying Supreme Council of Allied Powers operatives would refer to as "the chrysanthemum curtain." Sokurov hinges his final hurdles on Hirohito's behind-closed-door meetings with the Supreme Commander General MacArthur (Robert Dawson), and these are perhaps where the film approaches peak sordidness. Dawson's lends MacArthur a fluid awkwardness never granted to such titans of history in actual American movies, made all the more remarkable (as are the American occupiers at large) for the alienness Sokurov gives them in the eyes of the Japanese.

If MOLOCH aligns Nazi genocide with a rapacious Earth and TAURUS, contortions in revolution with the spinning of the stars - what to make of "the sun" vis-a-vis Hirohito's "Humanity Declaration" of New Years' Day 1946? Sokurov provides little biographical boilerplate in the run-up for this ecstatic decision, leaving viewers to bask/wallow in the extremity of pressure that allowed Hirohito to renounce his own divinity and transition the throne to "a symbol of the State and of the unity of the people" - under United States terms. Of Sokurov's headlong glimpses at history way out of its own depth, its explorations of this question surely make THE SUN his most majestic in its bizarre compassion.