Chris Knipp
11-16-2009, 07:26 PM
In late 2009 Aleksandr Sokurov's 2005 film The Sun is finally being released in the US. Lorber Films has secured the film and it begins Nov. 18-Dec. 1 at Film Forum in NYC a US theatrical release that will continue into 2010. Starring Japanese comic Issey Ogata in a haunting performance as Hirohito, The Sun depicts the last 24 hours before the strangely naive, detached Japanese emperor is forced to surrender to General Douglas MacArthur.
Sokurov's 2002 Russian Ark was an art house hit in the US, but the enthusiasm hasn't spilled over into further releases. I saw the director's 2003 Father and Son at Cinema Village in New York, but few saw it.
At the 2005 NY Film Festival, in a year when the slate included such excellent movies as Garrel's Regular Lovers, Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, the Dardennes' L'Enfant (The Child), Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, Haneke's Cache (Hidden), Chereau's Gabrielle, Hou's Three Times and Park's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Sokurov's The Sun stood out to me as a true cinematic masterpiece. I think it may be the best (as well as the most sympathetic and accessible) of the Russian's "Dictator Trilogy;" I've seen Moloch (about Hitler) on DVD, but not Tarus (about Lenin). The Sun showed at Berlin, Cannes, and other festivals including San Francisco.
Of The Sun Manohla Dargis of the NYTimes wrote: "Sokurov has shot this wonderfully eccentric and fascinating film -- as if it were a science- fiction film" Mr. Ogata is mesmerizing." As a portrait of pathology-- that of Japan and of Hirohito both -- it's terrific." That's true, but only hints at the immense psychological insight embodied in The Sun.
I watched The Sun at the New York Film Festival in 2005, and then again in the San Francisco festival. In my NYFF coverage I wrote (http://www.filmleaf.net/articles/features/nyff05/thesun.htm):
Sokurov's haunting recreation of how Emperor Hirohito spent the last hours before the Japanese surrender, this is a miraculous work, and it provided the most powerful aesthetic and emotional experience of the NYFF. The Sun depicts a man who knows very well what is going on but lives in a cocoon, in a state of detachment and ineffectuality that becomes strangely heart-rendiing. Issey Ogata's performance as the Emperor easily competes for hypnotic intensity with Bruno Ganz's in the German film Downfall -- but with a very different sort of bunker and a very different kind of man: a silent, immaculate country house with a few faithful servants in attendance; a small, frail but upright and dignified personage who can easily explain the causes of the Japanese defeat to his general staff but has never learned to dress himself or open a door. Even on this day he is more comfortable browsing through photos of his family and American movie stars, discussing marine biology, and writing poetry. Despite the disgrace, he is selflessly happy that peace has come. He inks a brush to write a statement to his absent son, but instead drafts a few verses about the weather. Later he is taken to see [General MacArthur], and then brought back again to dine with the general. He enjoys the wine and the meat and has his first taste of a Havana cigar. The Americans conclude that the Emperor is like a child. "What's it like being a living god?" [MacArthur] asks. And speaking, to the dismay of the Japanese interpreter, in perfect English, Hirohito says, "What can I tell you? You know, it is not easy being Emperor." These are just a few details in a film rich in telling ones. Simply enumerating them can't explain this film's slow, cululative emotional wallop -- or the lovely, fantastic, dreamlike landscape images toward the end. (Chris Knipp 2005)
Sokurov's 2002 Russian Ark was an art house hit in the US, but the enthusiasm hasn't spilled over into further releases. I saw the director's 2003 Father and Son at Cinema Village in New York, but few saw it.
At the 2005 NY Film Festival, in a year when the slate included such excellent movies as Garrel's Regular Lovers, Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, the Dardennes' L'Enfant (The Child), Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, Haneke's Cache (Hidden), Chereau's Gabrielle, Hou's Three Times and Park's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Sokurov's The Sun stood out to me as a true cinematic masterpiece. I think it may be the best (as well as the most sympathetic and accessible) of the Russian's "Dictator Trilogy;" I've seen Moloch (about Hitler) on DVD, but not Tarus (about Lenin). The Sun showed at Berlin, Cannes, and other festivals including San Francisco.
Of The Sun Manohla Dargis of the NYTimes wrote: "Sokurov has shot this wonderfully eccentric and fascinating film -- as if it were a science- fiction film" Mr. Ogata is mesmerizing." As a portrait of pathology-- that of Japan and of Hirohito both -- it's terrific." That's true, but only hints at the immense psychological insight embodied in The Sun.
I watched The Sun at the New York Film Festival in 2005, and then again in the San Francisco festival. In my NYFF coverage I wrote (http://www.filmleaf.net/articles/features/nyff05/thesun.htm):
Sokurov's haunting recreation of how Emperor Hirohito spent the last hours before the Japanese surrender, this is a miraculous work, and it provided the most powerful aesthetic and emotional experience of the NYFF. The Sun depicts a man who knows very well what is going on but lives in a cocoon, in a state of detachment and ineffectuality that becomes strangely heart-rendiing. Issey Ogata's performance as the Emperor easily competes for hypnotic intensity with Bruno Ganz's in the German film Downfall -- but with a very different sort of bunker and a very different kind of man: a silent, immaculate country house with a few faithful servants in attendance; a small, frail but upright and dignified personage who can easily explain the causes of the Japanese defeat to his general staff but has never learned to dress himself or open a door. Even on this day he is more comfortable browsing through photos of his family and American movie stars, discussing marine biology, and writing poetry. Despite the disgrace, he is selflessly happy that peace has come. He inks a brush to write a statement to his absent son, but instead drafts a few verses about the weather. Later he is taken to see [General MacArthur], and then brought back again to dine with the general. He enjoys the wine and the meat and has his first taste of a Havana cigar. The Americans conclude that the Emperor is like a child. "What's it like being a living god?" [MacArthur] asks. And speaking, to the dismay of the Japanese interpreter, in perfect English, Hirohito says, "What can I tell you? You know, it is not easy being Emperor." These are just a few details in a film rich in telling ones. Simply enumerating them can't explain this film's slow, cululative emotional wallop -- or the lovely, fantastic, dreamlike landscape images toward the end. (Chris Knipp 2005)